Price Guides, March 2005: Storage

DVDR Drives

Is there any reason not to get a DVDR drive these days? 16X support on both formats (even though only one of them actually produces media), dual layer write speed at 4X or higher, and the drives are dirt cheap. The product cycle for any optical storage products is difficult to describe at best, but the 8 th – 9 th generation design phases are/were downright bizarre. A few months ago, we wrote a roundup between the major DVDR manufacturers, and even looking at all of those reviewed models that were 16X write capable, most are obsolete already. Pioneer, Sony, LiteOn and LG all have new revisions of their 16X drives with better servos and write strategies capable of 4X dual layer writes. In some instances, the older drives are slightly cheaper, but due to the particulars of optical storage distributors, those drives will probably be completely dried up even before you have the chance to buy them. Given that the 9 th generation drives available today are really nothing more than “fixed” versions of the previous generation, saving a couple of dollars over last year’s hardware doesn’t make a lot of sense. To add a little bit of icing to the cake, the 9 th generation drives from most of the major manufacturers have a speed bump in CD-R burn speed as well.


We are working on another comprehensive DVDR roundup that should publish in the next couple weeks, but in the interim, we still recommend the NEC ND-3520A. Pioneer and NEC flip-flopped back and forth during the earliest days of the 8 th generation (16X DVD+R) drives, but with the introduction of the Pioneer DVR-109 [RTPE: DVR-109] and the NEC ND-3520A [RTPE: ND-3520A], no competitor has come close to the NEC drive as far as compatibility, stability and price. At publication, the ND-3520A retails for just under $60, and that’s a few bucks higher than last week’s price.

It’s not to say that other DVD drives are less capable than the ND-3520A or the DVR-109. The LG GSA-416 [RTPE: GSA-4163B] has an awesome price right now, considering the drive’s support for DVD-RAM. The only drawback on any LG drive is the less frequent firmware updates. Between NEC, LG or Pioneer, you won’t be disappointed and we hold a firm recommendation between the LG and the NEC drive. Stay tuned, of course, for the full DVDR roundup in the coming weeks!