External DVD burner recomendations

[MagnificentMarcus]

Anyone have some good recomendation for external DVD burners? My Samsung just died? Is Sony any good?

[lordsmurf]

Sony is an excellent choice. I bought two Sony 830 drives for $40 each on clearance at Office Depot last month. The current drive is the 840, and it's equally nice. I bought the internal version for my computer at work (on their dime). It's based on current generation Samsung hardware (which is unlike past generations, in terms of build and burn quality).

The only other good choice is Pioneer, as always.

You can play with a LiteOn drive if you want (HP and Memorex both rebadge LiteOn), but the current drives are a bit more aggravating than past ones.

I did some drive adding/replacing last month, with accompanying research.

[MagnificentMarcus]

I don't know about Pioneer. I had two of the 109s (Comstar) and they really sucked! I would like to get a Toshiba External DVD burner but they are the most expensive on Ebay-what gives?

[lordsmurf]

TSST = Toshiba/Samsung
So it's the same drive, whether it has Samsung or Toshiba branded on it.

[MagnificentMarcus]

Well LS, I'm sort of taking your advise! I purchased the following below off of ebay. Didn't find no 830 or 840s.

EXTERNAL USB 2.0 SONY LightScribe 20X+18X DVD±RW BURNER
NEW+LightScribe+SONY AD-7191A CD/DVD±RW DUAL LAYER NERO

[lordsmurf]

The newest 20x max is the DRX-840U model.
The previous 18x max drive was the DRX-830U model.

I have one new one, two older ones. All work quite nicely. Zero coasters to date, using Sony and Verbatim media. Plan to test some cheap junk down the road, see how it performs (curious if it is tweaked for decent CMC performance)... testing only, not that I'd use cheap junk regularly.

[MagnificentMarcus]

So what is the SONY AD-7191A CD/DVD±RW DUAL LAYER Burner? Is it the 840?