Top 5 optical drives (January - March 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

This quarter's poll is the largest ever, covering 40 drives.

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 January the 2nd 2008.

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

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Last edited by Dee; 17-12-2007 at 01:19.

Pioneer DVR-112/D is turning out some of the best burns I've had with lots of media (burning no faster than 12x).

LiteOn LH-20A1P is a solid drive (burning no faster than 12x) which has the DVD scanning capability that the Pioneer drive lacks.

I've picked a few, but the top one on my personal list is the Pioneer 115D. In the short time I've owned it, it's turned out excellent burns on my current most used MIDs (TYG03, YUDEN000 T02/T03), Made in India MCC004 and RICOHJPN R03).

This drive looks set to overtake my Sammy SH-S182D/LG E10N as my favourite drive right now.

I could not agree more. For me this new addition from Pioneer has blown me away. Very consistent and burns well at all speeds ( using quality media only though ).

My vote(s) went for the Liteon 20A1P, 20A1S, and my favorite burner as of
right now my S203B. My 20A1S does a good job as does my 20A1P@DW2000
and my plain old 20A1P but my 4 S203B's still out burns them all.

Drives I selected :

Benq DW2000 "20A1P"(For the looks)

LiteOn 20A1P : Awesome burner /scanner /ripper /reader

Pioneer 115 : I will have one for sure and I voted for it just for its potntial and good burns shown in the forum

Drives I tried and didn't like :

Asus DRW-1814BLT : Medicore at best

LG GSA-H42N :High jitter with media I use

LiteOn DH-20A3P : Not as good as 20A1P

Optiarc AD-7170A/S :Crap

Samsung SH-S203B : very overrated burner which is only good as CD-R burner

Hi
I have voted for
IDE
Pioneer DVR-115(D)
SATA
Samsung SH-S203(B)(N), LG GSA-H62N, Pioneer DVR-212.
The Pioneer DVR-115 is easily the best DL burner I've ever had. Followed closely by the 212.
The 203 has proved consistant in both its speed & quality. Though some slight trade off on the quality.
The LG 62 is not only better on quality (it is slower mind you, with 16x rated media burnt at 20x with 203) than the 203. But with 8x media or if wanting to burn @ less than 16x. The LG is quicker than the 203.
Whereas last time I put the 203 out on its own.
The Pioneer DVR-115 (& from what I've seen of it ) the 215 SATA version are going to be the drives on santa's list this year.
So I am predicting for the new year
Joint 1st Pioneer DVR-115/215
Joint 3rd Samsung SH-S203(B)(N)
5th LG GSA-H62(N)(L).
If you want general scanning Lite-On might have to be considered if going to use CD/DVDSpeed.
I have started using K-Probe & DVDinfopro with the Samsungs.
Although having a Lite-On LH-20A1S means I can drop back to CD/DVDSpeed if needed.

BTW The Pioneer DVR-115 does well (as did its predecessor) with 'budget' media too.

After only 4 burns, I can tell that my new 112D will be my fav for quality burning on average media. Low jitter on CMC media has me the most impressed.

I still adore my 20A1P and its quirks. It has some pretty consistent scans [once you slow it down and set the features just right]. Always fun to overspeed media, even when you know a coaster is around the corner. Also fun to crossflash the drive to multiple brands/models. Just wish the 8x scanning quirk could be fixed.

The SH-202G [closest thing I could find for the 840A] seems to be okay for 8x to 18x. The ability to take a 4x media and auto-overspeed it to 8x [albeit with no way for the user to control the speed] is pretty nice. Quiet, with few vibrations. 20x seems to work just fine, although [understandably] with lower quality than lower speeds.

The LG GGC-H20L is incorrectly listed as a "Blu-Ray", when in fact it is a BD/HD ROM (and DVD burner). The LG GGW-H20L is a BD burner and HD-ROM.

The Pioneers are great as always, some of the best burners you can buy. They will give you the best possible burn on anything you put in them, and if past experience tells, will run a long time too.

I wish I could put in a minus vote for Samsung 203B. I agree with MinaelRomany that it's overrated. It's OK if you don't burn +RW or DL or want to rip movies with it. But some people don't and they've sold so many to Freakers on low price and a few raves that it's going to win the vote on quantity over quality. 30% of 200 is more than 80% of 50.

My votes are:

LH-20A1P and Samsung SH-S230B

The LH-20A1P is out for a while now and still one of the best around imho and the Samsung has become my new favorite

I am waiting to see more scans from the new NEC drives before votting.

I have mostly used pioneers, i have had an DVR-107,DVR-109 and DVR-111. I have also had a Asus DRW-1403. The Pioneer 107 was great at the time, 109 made crap burns -found it incompatible with lots of media, still running the 111 and the Asus- Asus tray slider failed after only 3 months so now i have to push and pull the tray manually. 111 has been good. Where i work we sell heaps of the LG GSA-H42N, LG GSA-H62N drives and find them awesome for all types of media, so they are my vote.

Plextor PX-800A is my first choice

Pioneer DVR-112D second choice

Have had no problems with either burner only had the Plextor for 2 months but not 1 coaster yet.

bean55

What no NEC??

Optiarc = NEC
New 72xx series = Awesome.

Pioneer DVR-112D - Awesome burns
LiteOn LH-20A1P - Awesome scanner and decent burner
Samsung SH-S203B - Not bad burns but not as good as my Pioneer DVR-112D

none of the above. the only brand i've owned of the above was liteon from the early days which failed miserably.- not saying the new ones suck cause i dont know.

i use a io magic burner Idvd12d which i flashed with a dl burner from the same company. so it wasnt a dl but it became one and have had no problems since purchase. two years ago -i think. 400+ burns so im still a newb but im workin on it!

my spec
wxp pro sp3rc1
amd 1.6 socket"a"=yes socket a!
ati 9800 pro xt
1 gig ram
80 gig hd
22'' Lg wide screen

yes im old and crusty but my burns r hd quality that look great on my 1080p 56'' Lg Lcd.



can we please put site or best pricing info on maybe the top five burners, so users of forum can "upgrade" if they wish. thanx

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Last edited by flashgod; 29-12-2007 at 12:24. Reason: last line -only important one

I would wote for -

Plextor PX-712A - Rather old, but it is very good scanner and great quality tester
LiteOn LH-20A1H - Awesome burner for all types
Samsung SH-S203N - Awesome reader and good DL burner

Not included -
Plextor PX-716A - bad burner, quality scans are not so exact
as with 712A

My votes went for the Optiarc AD 7170A because of the capability to be able to ovespeed so much media with almost no failure rate & excellent quality.

And the DVR 112D because of it's superior writing quality low jitter. I can burn 3rd class media @ 18x & get a jitter count of 8% average!!

Seems not all these drives are available to me in the USA and may never be............Low vote counts on newer drives not available to some of us could make this poll inaccurate.

Dee i'm not trying to throw a wrench in the poll Just some crazy thought's i had

I understand what you're saying, Rolling. A lot of the big gun names in ODD, release their drives in Europe before they are released in the USA. And some drives, because of licensing restrictions may never be released in the USA.

New drives like the Optiarc 72xx series are very new and still quite rare. It's natural that people who don't own a drive will be sceptical. Especially with Optiarc, who's recent drives have not been great. But if any drive is truly good, that will show in future polls. A new drive does not have to top the poll when it's first released.

I ended up voting for my tried-and-true drives... no Lite-ons this time, though--they've been too fragile in my experience.

...what an evil idea.

Only a few more hours left to vote.
If you haven't already voted, now would be a good time to vote.

Like rolling's comments, I wished the U.S. had gotten the new NEC drives for us to play around a bit to assess its performance, not that we don't trust the scans posted.

But my votes went to these drives:
LiteOn LH-20A1P/LH-20A1H/DH-20A3P
Pioneer DVR-112D/DVR-115D
Samsung SH-S203B

LiteOn - tweaking capabilities make them fun to play with.
Pioneer - excellent burners for good and bad media.
Samsung - good performer, would be better if firmware flexibility were like that of LO to make use of the MediaTek chipset.