Which DVD burner should I buy??

I'm in the market for a DVD burner. I have a Dell Dimmension 2400 2.4ghz 256 ram 60gb. There are two burners I am looking at on Newegg.com, and I can't choose between them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106988
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827131256
The LITE-ON and the SONY both have the same read/write speeds, but I see nothing in the description of the SONY about any buffer underrun protection, but it has a better access time. How important is access time and is it more important than any kind of buffer underrun protection? I'm also open to any suggestions that come with a black faceplate (to match my kick ass dell ), burns dual layer, and has high read/write speeds, and is around the $50 or so price range.

thanks

 

Go with the sony name brand plus they have great reading ability when compared to lite on and they write quality dvds.

 

My personal preference is Plextor. They are usually more expensive but their products are very good. Their drives make less noise than any other brand I know. I like to pay extra money for superior products. Cant be wrong with them.

I have a Lite-On DVD-ROM and since I bought it after a while I can notice a very annoying hissing noise. If im in games where there are lots of sounds I dont hear it. I first noticed it when watching a movie scene where it was very silent.

 

NEC makes a good burner for a cheap price, and so does Pioneer.

By the way, since it's so cheap, you should check out some extra RAM on Newegg

 

Yea, I have extra RAM, but i gave it to my sister cause i'm such a nice guy.. When looking for a burner though, what's the most important aspect? access time? cache? buffer underrun protection?

 

Cache size is important it makes the drive faster 8 megs is the current I believe but write speed should be high as well rpm.

 

bump

I have the same question and wonder if the Lightscribe is worth looking at?

Or staywitn NEC or pioneer, or liteon or .....?

 

I recently went through this for a friend. Did tons of digging on this topic.
I read lots and lots of head to head reviews and I can tell you the
following:

The Plextor of course is the best, but expensive. I have the 716A

The entire 3500 series from NEC has been on the top of the list
of all the reviews that I have seen. NEC really has their act
together when it comes to this series of drive.
The newest one I am aware of is the 3540A and you can
find that drive shipped from Newegg for under 50$

 

i have a sony dru-710a, and i couldn't be more happy with it. it can burn all the way up to 16x, but i have never went that fast, because i just never have bought the media. once, though, my drive's optical thing broke, and i just called sony. they have great technical support, so if you're going to be doing alot of burning, make sure what ever you get is warrenteed.

 

This is very true. Probably the best reason to spend the extra
bucks to get the "retail" version of whatever drive you decide on.
The retail versions usually have a much better warranty
than the oem's do.

 

I'm using an Aopen drive that I bought for dirt cheap. The only bad thing is, it doesn't support DVD-R DL. But before I bought it, I looked around and couldn't find any DVD-R DL, just DVD+R, so I think I can live without it supporting that one type

So far, it has worked like a dream.

In regards to the original question, the Sony almost certainly has the protection. I dont think Ive seena DVD Writer that didn't.

 

yeah, that is important to look at. newegg has alot of great deals and what not, but if you break your hardware you're outta luck. most of neweggs market is oems, and that is why they sell for so cheap. there is not any good warrenties. if i were you, i would just save up the 80$ go to bestbuy or circuitcity and buy a retail sony, or for that matter retail anything. no matter what you do, you can't control a optical drive going faulty, or anything else. sure, you can do things to prevent it, but not stop it. best thing is to have a warranty for ATLEAST one year. also, about your question of the sony and quality and protection stuff, i have burned a bajillion home movies, and never had a problem.

 

ATM I have the retail liteon SOHW-1673so2c,its awsome,I have replaced my sony combi drive with it which wasnt a good drive and noisy,I'v had 3 now and give up on them but thats just my own personal experience,different from other parts I would definately buy retail,for £30 I got the drive with an oem copy of Nero Oem suite and power DVD "that makes 3 copies of power dvd I have now ",but one feature I have come to love is the tool Incd,whatever media you put in dvd cdr ect.,you can format it and backup your data to the full capacity of the disk,unlike the crap tool built into windows that you have to click through boxes to send something to cd,the drive fires up instantly and burns them to the DVD just like a harddrive and unlike other programs I have used they can be read by any other computer,they dont have to have nero to view the files

 

Do you remember where you bought it?!?

 

Believe it or not, CompUSA.

 

My nearest Compost pile is 3 hrs 15 mins away.

They have free shipping today though!

Thanks for the reply.