Three Price Conscious Slim DVD Burners

I have had my Compaq laptop for a year now and I love it but it doesn't have a DVD burner in it. So I decided it was time to buy one and put it in, but I didn't want to spend a lot and I wanted the best value for my money. So I started looking into the many Slim DVD burner drives on the market and came up with three models that fit the bill and were cost effective. The three drives I found were the best quality drives at the cheapest price I could find for a brand new Slim DVD Burner.

The first drive I found was a Samsung 8X DVD±R (model SN-S082D) it's a nice looking drive that comes in a black finish to match most computers. The drive comes packaged with Nero Express, which is nice that they include some burning software. Nero express is an effective burn utility for most basic functions, but I suggest you get a full version of Nero 7.

The DVD drive writes at 8X for DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-R but only writes at 6X for the DVD-RW disks. Not a huge downfall but it would be nice to burn the same speed for all disks. The DVD-ROM access time is 130ms on this drive which is the slowest of the bunch. It of course will burn CD's as well and burns at 24X speeds which is pretty fast. 8X for burning DVD's is pretty good to considering this drive only costs about $60.

The only thing I didn't like about this drive was that it doesn't offer LightScribe technology, but what do you expect for the price. This drive did however support Dual Layer format which is an added bonus. Overall this drive would be an effective replacement to my old drive that doesn't burn DVD's.

Check this drive out here.

The next drive is my favorite and is the one I actually ended up buying and that is the Sony NEC Optiarc 8X DVD±R burner (Model AD-5540A). Slightly more expensive than the Samsung ($65) it was just the drive I thought would best fit my needs and I have had a Sony DVD burner in my desktop for the past 4 years and it has never given me any trouble. I also chose the Sony because its Access time was 180ms for DVD-ROM and 150ms for CD-ROM which was slightly faster than the other two drives.