Best Burners..

[mp3blast]

I think that the best cdrws are made by Lite on, am i right?
I own two lite on 52x burners, one black and one tan, and I think that their the best ones ever. I never have errors

I've had Memorex and HP burners before, but i've always had problems with those

:D

[felix88]

Lite On makes great burners. i've also had very good luck with Plextor.

[Dud3!]

LiteOn is the best, and cheap too. Newegg has a 52x32x52 for less than $40.

And LiteOn makes the drives for just about everyone else, including Sony. Plextor is still making their own, but that may have changed now. :P

[felix88]

it's hard to say any specific brand is "best." last time i was reading about burners, the plextor had a little better quality for audio extraction and the lite on was a little better for data(maybe i've got it backward..).

anyway, lite on makes good drives, i use them when i build systems for customers. but i use a plextor burner in my own system.

[Karnivore]

Can't beat the Liteon's, been using them for a couple years, zero coasters, zero failures, Extremely high compatibility with software, and great prices....

[faruquehabib]

plextor and sony are the top dogs in my book, but they cost more, too

[TheDude]

Plextor all the way!

[Alexandrus]

Plextor for me too, Sony=LITE-ON OEM :)

[mp3blast]

yeah i heard that TDK were good too, but i havent bought one so i wouldnt know

[Jeff]

Never had any problems with all the different Lite-On drives I've owned. I've also put ~10-15 CDRW drives in other people's rigs and haven't heard any complaints.

And for under $40 shipped... how can you go wrong. :D

[mp3blast]

Yeah i bought my second lite on as a refurb, and got it for $25 shipped

[Dud3!]

TDK and Sony = LiteOn drives :P

[jamaljaco]

I can't speak for plextor but I have used all the others mentioned so far in this thread and I say Lite On all the way,I have had problems with all the rest, also i'll add MSI to the list of not so good.

[mp3blast]

wow i knew that sony was a liteon but i wasnt sure about tdk

thanks

[Wrench]

Yeah LiteOn's are good, I don 't mind LG either tho.

[PimpJack]

TDK :)

[MediOCre]

You won't go wrong with either Liteon or Plextor but if you want the best, save your nickels and get the Plextor Premium.

Fairly thorough review here: http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/112 (decent review archive & forum if you feel like browsing.)

I've used:
Memorex 4x (dead) Error ridden burns and multiple RMA's for sudden death.
Smart and Friendly 4x (What was I thinking?)
HP 8x (dead) Picky with media, poor copy protection support.
Sony 12x, 24x The 12 was picky with media, 24x is fine.
Liteon 48x Great burner, likes any media, fast audio extraction, excellent copy protection support but just feels cheap compared to the Plex.
Plextors, 8x, 12x, 24x and the Premium. Cleanest burns of the bunch, quietest, great copy protection support, excellent features with the Premium and likes any media. I've strayed from the Plextor occasionally but always wind up going back.

[shrae]

TDK rebadges Plextor for one of their DVD burners. Dunno about other models.

[JToolz]

Plextor PX-708a is the best one Ive ever owned.

[toolbox]

Lite-ons are the LOUDEST thing I have EVER heard. But they work really well and I dont play on using my CDdrive at night.

[Dud3!]

Saw an LG in the store yesterday, can we say LiteOn? :-P

[shrae]

Originally posted by JToolz
Plextor PX-708a is the best one Ive ever owned.

Yep, same here - have a 708A and love it (it's a DVD burner though, not CD). It burns all my Fuji (Ricoh) 4x DVD+R's at 8x with no problems. Wouldn't work with nVidia's current nForce2 driver set on my NF7-S though (would burn coaster every time), had to use mwarhead's IDE drivers.

[mp3blast]

bleh, lite ons arent loud to me, but i can see waht you mean because when burning a cd it gets kinda loud, but not much

[JToolz]

Originally posted by shrae
Yep, same here - have a 708A and love it (it's a DVD burner though, not CD). It burns all my Fuji (Ricoh) 4x DVD+R's at 8x with no problems. Wouldn't work with nVidia's current nForce2 driver set on my NF7-S though (would burn coaster every time), had to use mwarhead's IDE drivers.

Does CD-R as well because its a combo drive and still burns cdrs at 40x. Amazing drive!

[Karnivore]

Surprisingly, no one has mentioned that most Liteon drives can be easily overclocked :D

[sky]

lol, yea you can update some of lg's drives to go way higher than what they're sold as. but in my book plextor is the ultimate - in performance as well in prices ;).
another good one in my book is the 52x msi. has been running like a charm.

oh on a sidenote.. dvd-rs... we got a black nec 1300a latest rev (i guess it was sold in the us as 1100a a while back) and that one has killed every single dvdr i tried to write on. too damn funny it can't even read the crap it has burned. tried to make a backup with it - and had nero verify it. all files were different!!! now that's a kickin a cdr ;)...
can't complain about lg's 404b or my teac dw50d. not a single error so far.

[mp3blast]

Originally posted by Karnivore
Surprisingly, no one has mentioned that most Liteon drives can be easily overclocked :D

:slobber:

[shrae]

Ah yeah, I didn't mean to say that the 708A doesn't burn CDs - it does quite capably. Just meant that it's a DVD burner, therefore has the higher associated price.

[Bhairav]

Hehe.. I bought a Lite-On 401S DVD writer - 4X DVD+R/RW only, no -R/RW capabilities. A little magick later, and now it writes 4X DVD+Rs at 8X(!!!) and can also write to -R discs at 4X!

[Slickthellama]

be carefull with 52X burners, at that speed the cds can explode. I am not joking either.

[Attitudx]

i had a sony and it died so now i have an artec not bad only burns a few coasters

[sky]

ohh.. well it's best burners, but i gotta throw this in

friend of mine bought a btc burner at a local electronics megastore. arriving he immediately hooked it up and tried to burn a 4x dvd. well screen said 4x and after around 70mins (!) ;) the drive was done. too bad it couldn't finalize the dvd, but what the hell into the player it goes and??... ZIP! a first rate coaster.
k. my friend gets a little annoyed and tries another one - same-o same-o. so he goes shopping for some other brand of dvd-r's and on returning tests those aswell.. nah out of the 4 brands he tested only ONE (!) would end being useable - some trackrecord, eh. oh and this one piece of glory took all of 70 minutes for every single one of those discs - coasters or not. he didn't try cd-rs in there - wasn't in the mood for some additional coasters i'm afraid ;)

so he returned it the following monday and grabbed an lg404b and lived happily ever after. oh and he can burn those 4x discs in like 15mins now - just like my teac does.
---
after that he went to mr google and had a search and came up with a load of reports just like his own.. so there you go.
now they seem to have fixed the firmware of that pos and i've read that it now performs like it was supposed to, but i guess a lot of customers will stay away from them, "once burned ..." or however that saying goes..

[halcyon]

Best is a relative measure and a multi-variable at that too.

For best compatibility with even the worst of media, my choice of CDRW drives go to Plextor (non-combo drives).

For best compromise of quality, features, software (only works on their drives) and compatibility my vote goes to Plextor Premium. It's much more expensive though.

For DVD burning my choice is Pioneer (A07/107 currently) as it's quality and compatibility with CD and DVD burning is unsurpassed (by even Nec, Plextor or LiteOn).

If you want more insightful details, go to club.cdfreaks.com, www.cdrlabs.com and www.cdr-info.com.