[Advice needed] AD-7203 vs DVR-216 vs SH-S223

[jfromeo]

Hi my fellow CDRLabbers

I'm new to the community, so first of all, hi, and I hope to serve as much as I can and get some help when needed.

I'm building a new rig and need to get decided among this 3 units:

Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7203S


Pioneer DVR-216








Samsung SH-S223








I'm searching a versatile unit, with frequent firmware upgrades, and that produces extremely high quality burns, no matter how much it costs. I don't care at all about speeds, as I burn most of my media at a low speed so as to avoid issues typical from high speed burnings. I'm almost decided with the Optiarc unit, as I've been using Sony/NEC units for years. But every advice is very appreciated

Many thanks.

[Ian]

I can't comment on the SH-S223 as I don't have one yet (hint hint Samsung). I've been pretty happy with the Optiarc AD-7200S that I have. My only real beef with it is that it supports only 2 media types at 20x and its not exactly speedly when writing to DL media. It doesn't sound like this will effect your decision though.

If the DVR-216 is anything like the DVR-116, it should be a pretty decent drive. The only problem I've run into with the 116 is that DVD+RW media isn't readable when written at 8x.