Holiday Shopping Roundup: Eight Dual Format Recordable DVD Drives

Conclusions

Hopefully, our look at these eight burners was enough to help draw some conclusions about the burner that really is the drive to own. Typically, we do not give out Editor's Choice awards but for this cross-section of burners, we feel there is enough data to provide us with a winner for this holiday season.

Sony's DRU-530A and Plextor's 708A were the most viable opponents in this roundup. However, it is very clear that Plextor's PowerRec II technology isn't just a cookie cutter optimization. Even though the 708A and the DRU-530A are based on identical chipsets, the Plextor 708A smokes the Sony DRU-530A in DVD+R writes and compatibility. The only real advantage of the DRU-530A was slightly higher media compatibility on poorer quality DVD-Rs, and slightly better technical support. Right now, the Plextor 708A is priced slightly better than the Sony DRU-530A ($199 versus $219, respectively, with MIR), but given Sony's leverage, the DRU-530A will probably be priced equivalent to the 708A after the holiday season. Kudos to Plextor for winning our well-deserved Editor's Choice award in this roundup.


For those who argue the NEC and LiteOn burners are “good enough” for $100, we feel that this is partially correct, but you get what you pay for. When you end up spending an additional $50 for decent burning software, the savings from these two burners isn't quite that dramatic. Our issues with customer support and media compatibility were something to be desired as well. Don't forget to check out the following second part of this roundup when we have first generation 8X DVD-R burners to evaluate.

We are not fans of honorable mentions, but we think Nu Tech actually deserves one here. Since they did not have a dual capable firmware in time for our roundup, it would not be fair for us to give them an Editor's Choice award in our Dual Format Roundup. However, if Nu Tech does indeed debut with their dual firmware on December 15^th (as claimed), we will re-evaluate their burn speeds and price. After all, Nu Tech does have all the components right for winning this roundup (bitsetting, price tag, performance, software bundle). Good luck to Nu Tech, and we will see them again in a couple weeks.

Not only were we analyzing each individual burner in this roundup, we were also analyzing which DVD forum came out ahead in burn time and burn quality. Compatibility with various DVD drives has become less of an issue with DVD+R lately, particularly due to the die-hard fans and companies who write bitsetting utilities. It is slightly unfair to claim DVD+R the leader in this roundup because DVD-R does not support 8X burn speeds yet, but that is exactly what we feel is correct. Not only does DVD+R excel in 8X burn speeds, but DVD+RW outperforms DVD-RW with 4X and 2.4X burn times versus 2X.

Today, we looked at eight burners that make up the majority of this holiday season's DVD recordable market. Unfortunately, we couldn't include everyone. Within the upcoming weeks, we are anticipating 8X DVD+R and DVD-R capable drives from LiteOn, Pioneer, ASUS, and AOpen. Of course, had we waited for their debut, Anand would be wondering why I charged six dual format DVD drives to his credit card. Stay tuned in the next couple of months for the follow up — 8X DVD-R roundup!