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I'm gonna buy a CD burner and I want the best I can buy. Can anyone tell me whcih one is the best? I know Plextor is good but I don't want to spend $50 extra for just the name. Thank you.

Lite-ON!

2 LiteOns

Soren,

Plextors are the best drives, bar none. However, the consensus is that LiteOns are very good and more cost effective. In addition to the $50 up front price, LiteOns come bundled with the superior Ahead S/W. Whereas, Plextors come with the less desireable Roxio.

Personally, I have two LiteOns, both 52x24x52x at this writing (both from Best Buy). One badged as a Memorex ($50 AMIR) with full up Nero and the other is badged as a Verbatim ($20 AMIR) with Nero Express.

Slim
Who needs to install that Verbatim and try it out.

Soren wrote:I'm gonna buy a CD burner and I want the best I can buy. Can anyone tell me whcih one is the best? I know Plextor is good but I don't want to spend $50 extra for just the name. Thank you.

You should select a LiteOn CD burner. I'm not sure I'd say LiteOn is better than Plextor, but LiteOn provides very good quality at a reasonable price. The extra cost of the Plextor isn't worth it for most people. The best LiteOn drive which is *currently* available is the LiteOn LTR-52246S. Newegg.com has the retail boxed version of the LiteOn LTR-52246S for $45.50 + shipping. One bit of advice: if you can delay your purchase a few months, you should consider Liteon's recently announced LTR-52327S CD burner. This burner is not yet on the market, but I think it will be available soon. After this burner becomes available, read the online reviews and comments to make sure they are positive. This CD burner, which is a 52/32/52 CD-RW drive, will have *much* improved CD-RW rewrite performance, from what I've read. The drive may be better than the LTR-52246S in other areas as well. But, if you must buy now, the LTR-52246S CD burner is very good and has a very cheap price.

got my eyes on the new Lite-On too, good luck with the 32x rw media tho

LiteON all the way! Good quality, excellent price, unsurpassed firmware support, and Karr Wang handing out awsome testing software for it!

I got my eye on the 52x32x52x model myself. I believe the model number is 52327S. It'll make a fine upgrade from my LiteON 48125W

If your in it for the quality. Go with the Plextor Premium CD Writer. It is much higher quality then the Lite-On Writers or any other writer for that matter.

If you just want an average drive that will burn CD's go with a Lite-On.

Just a note:

They have no extra quality than other drives such as Aopen. They are just cheaper.

Lite-On LTR-52246 - 52x24x52x

$51.50 for Retail Packaged - Newegg.com - White Bezel
$49.00 for OEM Packaged - Newegg.com - White Bezel
$51.00 for OEM Packaged - Newegg.com - Black Bezel

i know, i know i just bought External Yamaha CRW-F1, but my heart still belongs to Lite-On

it's funny, what with some people belittling Plextor for not being good drives but only a good reputation, and now (some of the same people?) are recommending a Lite-On drive that isn't out yet...how do you know it's going to be good? maybe because of the Lite-On reputation??? hmm...

because lite-on is better for backing up software, but plextor's have the nice burning quality, and now cooler features, but still can't back up software the best

That's part of the Lite-On Reputation, "backing-up" software.

That is very funny dodecahedron, thanks for pointing that out.

hoxlund wrote:because lite-on is better for backing up software, but plextor's have the nice burning quality, and now cooler features, but still can't back up software the best

Very few people use it for "backing-up" software. Most people use thier burners for backing up information for work, or to be more realistic, downloading music from the Internet and burning it to CD's.

I have also not had a problem with my Premium when it comes to copying CD's, whether it be data, or audio, or a vcd.

maybe because of the Lite-On reputation??? hmm...

Yes, but LiteOn doesn't double-charge for the drive, do they?

dodecahedron wrote:it's funny, what with some people belittling Plextor for not being good drives but only a good reputation, and now (some of the same people?) are recommending a Lite-On drive that isn't out yet...how do you know it's going to be good? maybe because of the Lite-On reputation??? hmm...

I didn't recommend a drive that's not out yet. That's just pure bull. Referring to the LTR-52327S, I said:

"After this burner becomes available, read the online reviews and comments to make sure they are positive."

I was telling Soren to examine the model and make sure the reviews/opinions are favorable. That is not a recommendation! That means that if the reviews/comments from reviewers and owners indicate the drive is crap, then don't buy it! It was just a speculation that the drive *should* be good, but make sure before you buy. So dodecahedron, your criticism is way out of bounds. Furthermore, my criticism at Plextor is aimed at their 48/24/48A model *only*. I have never made fun or criticized the Premium model--that would be stupid. I just don't understand why some people don't get it. Perhaps I have not made enough of an effort to make my opinion clear: since I have only tested the Plextor 48/24/48A, I can only say that that one drive is crap. My old Plextor 12/4/32 SCSI CD-RW drive was of very good quality and was a great drive. Even though my experience with the 48/24/48A makes me doubt Plextor's current level of quality and makes me not want to buy from them again, that doesn't mean I'm going to beat up any other models they make because I haven't tested them. I would recommend the Premium drive to certain people, but I personally would not buy it.

One other thing: one of the lessons I learned with my bad experience with the Plextor 48/24/48A is that it is best to wait until a product was been out for a while before buying it, to allow enough time for bugs to be fixed and enough opinions and experiences to be posted to the Internet so one can make a very informed decision before buying a product. If I had waited a little longer buying the Plextor 48/24/48A, I would have found the negative online user comments about the noise issue, and the bad quality audio issue, and I would have avoided the drive. So, @Soren, if you can wait for the LTR-52327S, make sure you wait at least 4 months after the initial reviews become available--6 months is preferred. Then read all the online reviews and comments carefully and then if the drive still has good reviews, then buy it.

i would go for the ltr-52246s, its been out awhile, and no they don't double charge, $50 on average gets you the best 52x writer, in my opinion

it really depends if you think having a 32x rw speed is gonna make it worth the extra $10 or so

or if you even use the rw at all, i hardly use mine, and my yamaha's 24x is fast enough for me

For me I don't care about the speed so much, I burn at 12x-24x only for personal use, but I want to have a current burner so I can test media for my review website at all the available speeds.

yeah when i rw write, its at 24x, but when i burn cd images or data on cd-r, i usually do half the speed, just to make sure it burns excellent, then scan all my disks with cd speed

With the Premium you don't have to cut the speed of the burn. Just tell the program 52x. Then PoweRec will automatically adjust the burning speed for what is best with that media.

aviationwiz: Gee really? wow! I didn't know that Plextor had managed something that rudimentary with their drives.

okay, all sarcasm aside, it's not the drives that cause the problems with burning media at faster or slower speeds, it's the media. THe drive DOES have a little to do with it, but let me say this:

when I can get 0.200 C1 errors averaging over a full 80min disc, and no C2 errors with my $50.00 (CANADIAN DOLLARS!) LiteON drive, why would I care to spend 3 times that much on a Plextor drive, even if it could beat those scores? does it matter if the average is 0.200 or 0.185??? *NO* those kinds of differences mean nothing!

gigarec: a nice little gimick, but completely useless unless everyone you share with also has a premium drive.

securecord: completely unneccessary to the average person, especially if you forget the password, that would be REALLY BAD!

Plextools: There's nothing here that a LiteON can't do, only liteON's have better C2 accuracy.

ok, Plextor's can rip audio protected music better then liteON's can, but I'm NOT going to spend 3x the price of a LiteON for that, when I can buy the audio CD and download properly ripped tracks anyways.

Plextor is over priced, face it. They have above average writing quality, granted, but the average writing quality of a LiteON is very good too. This says to me, that Plextor is SERIOUSLY lacking. If they dropped their price to about $100.00 Canadian, I MIGHT consider purchasing one.... MAYBE.

sorry, I have a real problem with plextor, and their cocky "better then everyone" attitude.

GigaRec made disks can be used on drives other than the Premium. I have done it myself.

The Premium is not over priced. To the person who really cares about thier data, it is properly priced. Lite-On is just a standard drive for a standard person who walks in and buys the drive at a Best Buy or Comp USA. Nothing special on Lite-On drives, that's why it is so cheap. There is a lot of unique features to the Premium, that is why it is priced higher.

You can compare the Premium to the F1. The F1 cost a lot more than other drives ($180 upon release I think) The drive did offer many features such as Disk T@2 and many other burning features, that other drives did not have.

tlotz:
take it easy man!
i wasn't thinking of any particular person when i wrote my post, that's including you!
and i wasn't criticizing.

i was just amused and made a funny anecdote.

good post dolphinius_rex