Top 5 optical drives (April - June 2008) Cast your vote now

Hello everyone
It's time again to vote for your favourite drives which will appear on the CD Freaks Frontpage Devices Top 5

You can vote for as many drives as you wish. We would also like to hear your reasons for voting for your selected drives.

The poll will be open for 2 weeks and will close on the April the 7th 2008.

Also remember that casting your vote will help others in their purchasing decision. Let's make sure nobody buys a bad drive anymore.

Hi
For me it was sad that of the drives at hand. I could only vote for the following.
Pioneer DVR-115 & 115D, these would be my number 1 drives.
Speed being more than acceptable. Quality, particularly with mediocre DL is surprisingly good.
Pioneer DVR-215 comes next, seemingly a tad more sensitive when compared to the IDE counterparts.
Samsung SH-S203D & 203N are next as they are very good readers/rippers. Excellent CDR burners, which includes audio.
While very quick @ max burn speeds with 16x rated media. The quality is not as good as some others available.
Unfortunately when dropping speed (stock f/w) they lose the asset of speed.
I also voted for the LG GSA-H62N, which has for some time now remained consistent in both speed & quality (DVD). But doesn't excel with CDR's.
Although sturdy build & reliable. I can't enthuse about the LG like my other drives.
But don't hold that against LG.
Lite-On got no vote as although probably essential for home scanning.
I don't have any of the models listed.
NEC, still toying with whether to get a 7203 A or S. Hmmmmm!!!
If you are wondering why I start off this post with "For me it was sad that of the drives at hand."
It was because it meant that only 2 manufacturers were showing strongly.

Voted for:
Pioneer 115D - Great overall drive, even if not burning at maximum rated speeds.
LiteOn 20A3P/20A3S - Newer chipset that's been pretty good, scanning capabilities, extra tools to tweak drives certain ways.

Voted for the LG GGC and GGW-H20L and the Sony S200; all three do a very satisfactory job burning everything I have tossed at them so far.

Waiting for the Pioneer 215 and the optiarc 7200s to become available here in the US.

It's easy for me this time, as i'm a fan of NEC/Optiarc.
I've reviewed all the likely front runners in this poll and the Optiarc AD-720x series stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of performance and writing quality across all media groups. Going by the results i've seen posted for these drives in the NEC forum, everyone seems to be very happy with these drives.

Other drives i like.
Pioneer DVR-x15 series
Samsung SH-S203B
LG GGW-H20L (Blu ray)

I would vote for the LG GH20.

Votes for the 7200A and the 215, both drives preform very good with almost any media.

Lite-On A3 - finally a real Lite-On again, it's been a long wait

The versatility of Lite-On drives puts them in a league of their own. Other drives leave me cold by comparison, no matter how good or fast they are (except for real Plextors of course ).

My vote hasn't changed from the last one, since I've bought no new drives (although the Optiarc 7200A looks mighty tasty).

LG H62N
Sammy SH-S203N
Pioneer 115D - I'm especially loving this one, very good to excellent with a wide range of media, and also works very nicely in a Belkin enclosure with stock firmware

Hehe, I was wondering about that . Maybe they finally understood they need to make compatible drives, and hired a Lite-On engineer . Anyway, besides being bland, the other thing I don't like about Pioneers is their lack of refinement. Clank-Boom-Bang-Whoooosh... reminds me of a production hall - no wonder they put them in duplication towers .

I've had the Samsung 203B for only a short time and I'm very impressed with it...looking forward to getting a Pioneer 215D and one of the NEC/Optiarc SATA offerings.

I voted for Pioneer 115 / 215 although I don't have one ....yet
And for LiteOn 20A4P : excellent DVD burner

I didn't vote for 203B because it is far from being impressive as a DVD burner but it is indeed an excellent ripper/reader and the best CD-R burner I've ever tested

now the people in the USA (me for one) can get most all of these drives

I just ordered a Pioneer 215DBK so i'll have to do some fast testing before this poll closes

I'm leaning the same way as Lin

Yo-

Am very impressed with both my Pioneer DVR-115D drives - they are currently my 'go to' burners for all my burning needs - and my Liteon 20A4x drives are still my preferred testing drives-eh!!

Do you eat drives for breakfast?

Personally I have no idea what to pick, cause I'm still using my old NEC 3520A and I'm very happy about it (although it is kinda slow in reading dual layer discs). Because of this drive I have become a NEC fan, so I guess if I had to buy a new drive I would buy me an Optiarc 7200A

115D and 203B for me

115/d here

Thanks everyone for taking the time to vote.
We now have our result and we would be very interested in hearing your views.

Some drives are different only on the way they are connected to the mainboard. So it's like having their votes splitted between the interface versions. Why is that?

This is actually the case for most drives in the poll. They are all unique models and are therefor stored in our hardware database this way. There is no other way of conducting the poll.

I understand that, Dee, but still, showing 3 basically identical drives in the top 5 does look kind of awkward. Differentiating between PATA and SATA I can understand still, but having Lightscribe/Labelflash/DVD-RAM iterations listed separately seems to limit the choice in the end, certainly this time. (Not to mention that Pioneer drives have become as good as extinct here, none of the main shops in my area stock them any more and that's with Pioneer Europe located right here in Flanders.) Not giving any criticism, just my thoughts .