Cant comment on their burners, but the one DVD-Rom I bought is VERY picky when reading, not in the same league as (original) Toshiba and not even "good" - but that might be just my luck. The bad thing is that Toshiba is using Samsung-drives starting with SD-M2012, and those just arent compareable to their old onesPersonally I miss my Plextor, it was a fantastic solid drive that burnt and read anything at the time. If their quality is still where it used to be, I couldn't recommend anything better than a Plextor (though they're expensive).
I've used the Samsung SATA drive, it's very good, nice and quiet though if it's only available in the EU that may not help you LG are now doing a SATA drive at about the same price (£25 in the UK, so probably $25 in the US).
Not quite the case, esp re: 1650/55. Output can be variable & given it's an 8ECC scanner PIF (& jitter) measurements are suspect. As a scanner/reader, it's also more susceptible to errors with increasing jitter. This has been corroborated by other brands, inc. Pioneer, LG, NEC, etc. The 1620/1640 were the best stock burners available in their day. The latest 1670 is mediocre. BenQ sold their DVDRW business to Liteon & now work on BR & HDDVD. The latest Liteon 6S burners can now produce better PIE, PIF, & jitter results (esp with ES FW). There is a Liteon SATA version of the 165P6S called the 165S6S.Currently (actually, for quite a while) BenQ produces the best DVD burners on the market - by a long shot.
Yep, i just bought a dvd burner from newegg for 30 bucks (samsung), pretty good drive so far. I'll more than likely replace it, when we get afordable BR/HD burners.To be honest my view on optical drives these days is that it's not worth paying three times as much for one which you think might last longer. DVD writers are disposable these days IMO. If you can get one which is a) cheap, b) doesn't burn coasters, then don't worry if it'll crap out in 18 months, just buy another one then. I'm sure others will disagree with me
Currently (actually, for quite a while) BenQ produces the best DVD burners on the market - by a long shot. The odd NEC burner can sometimes come close but that's it. They consistently come out on top where it counts: media compatibility and write quality.
That's because the Plextors were BenQ OEM. BenQ Solidburn & WOPC don't always produce the most optimal results. The latest Liteon official & ES firmware enables similar on-the-fly write strategy adjustment for known/unknown media via HT, OHT, & OS. Likewise, activating all options does not always give the best results.They were one of the few drive makers that had a plextor-like ability to create their own write strategies on the fly.