Samsung SE-208GB Portable 8x DVD Writer

With the growing popularity of ultrabooks and tablets, Samsung has set its sights on the portable optical drive market. This summer, the company introduced its latest external slim DVD writer, the SE-208GB. This lightweight drive sports a new design that maximizes the ease of pressing the eject button by placing it on top of the case. The SE-208GB is capable of 8x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 6x DVD±R DL and 5x DVD-RAM writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 8x. The drive is also USB powered and features support for Samsung's AV Connectivity and Smart Archive technologies. When written on archival grade media, Smart Archive delivers a 30 year long data lifetime.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the SE-20GB has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect from Samsung's new external slim DVD writer, we'll take a look at some of the drive's features and then put it through its paces to see how it performs. Is the SE-208GB the best choice for the person on the go? Keep reading as we find out.

The SE-208GB comes in a small black and white box. While there aren't a lot of details on the front, the back of the box lists many of the drive's features including support for technologies like AV Connectivity, Smart Archive and M-DISC. Inside the box, you'll find the SE-208GB, a USB cable, quick installation guide and a software CD containing CyberLink's Media Suite.

The drive Samsung sent us for this review was manufactured in July of 2014 and had firmware TS00. At the time of this review, this is the only firmware available for the SE-208GB.

The Samsung SE-208GB is one of the smallest DVD writers on the market today. Measuring 148.6 x 14 mm x 146 mm, it's not much larger than a couple of jewel cases stacked on top of one another.

The body of the SE-208GB is constructed out of lightweight, black plastic. The top of the drive has a glossy finish with a small, white Samsung logo printed along one of the edges. The LED and eject button are also located on top of the drive. This LED lights up green when both reading and writing.

The bottom and sides of the SE-208GB have a normal matte finish. There are also four small rubber feet on the bottom to keep it from sliding around when placed on a flat surface.

Along the rear, you can see the SE-208GB's USB 2.0 interface. This connector not only transfers data but provides power for the drive.

AV Connectivity:

The SE-208GB is the latest DVD writer from Samsung to offer support for their exclusive AV Connectivity technology. This unique feature lets you connect the drive to a TV, Android tablet or other AV device via USB and play back the music, pictures and videos stored on a CD or DVD.

To put the SE-208GB into AV Connectivity mode, simply hold down the eject button for 3 seconds while the tray is open. When you do this, the drive will be recognized as a USB memory device rather than an optical drive.

Samsung's AV Connectivity technology does have its limitations. It only works with CD and DVD (except DVD-RAM) media using UDF or ISO-9660 file systems. The number of files it can recognize is also limited to 3000 and they must be located in a directory no more than five levels deep. Furthermore, the number and size of the files determines the amount of time it takes the drive to recognize a disc. With a 4.3GB DVD, it can take up to two and a half minutes for the SE-208GB to read the contents and convert the file system to FAT32 so that it can be used by AV devices.

Smart Archive

The SE-208GB is also equipped with Samsung's Smart Archive technology. Unlike other existing optical disc archive technologies, this feature offers a recording quality that is optimized for DVDs used to store content for an extended time. The technology follows standard DVD formatting that is compatible with M-DISCs, archival discs (ISO10995 standard) and qualified normal discs.

To use Smart Archive you need Cyberlink Media Suite version 10 or higher which is included with the SE-208GB. To create an Archival DVD, launch Cyberlink Media Suite, click Data & Backup and then create a new Data Disc. From there, click on the Archival DVD icon located on the right-hand side of the Data Disc column.

Take note that when creating an Archival DVD, the maximum capacity is limited to 4,100 MB instead of the 4,488 MB that is normally available on a single layer DVD.

More Features:

By looking at the picture below, you can see that Samsung's new DVD writer is identified as an "TSSTcorp CDDVDW SE-208GB."

Using Alex Noe's Weak Sector Utility we were able to determine that the SE-208GB is a "two sheep" burner. This means that Samsung's new drive is capable of backing up titles protected by SafeDisc 2, including version 2.51.

Here is a screen shot from Erik Deppe's Opti Drive Control. Among other things, this program queries the drive to see what its reading and writing capabilities are. Opti Drive Control had no problems detecting the SE-208GB's reading and writing speeds and supported disc types.

Opti Drive Control also shows that the SE-208GB is an RPC-2 DVD drive. This means that the drive's region is stored in the firmware. The region can be changed five times and after that it cannot be changed anymore. Unfortunately, a patched RPC-1 firmware is not yet available for this drive.

While Opti Drive Control gives us a quick glance at the SE-208GB's features, DVDINFOpro provides a little more information on some of the drive's reading and writing capabilities. By looking at the screenshot above you can see that while Samsung's new drive can read and write to DVD+R DL, DVD-R DL and DVD-RAM media, it does not support technologies like LightScribe or Labelflash.

The SE-208GB doesn't let you set the book type of DVD+RW discs. However, using software like Nero, you can set the book type for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media to "DVD-ROM." This greatly reduces compatibility problems, especially with older DVD players.

Current DVD technology uses organic dyes and low laser power to make marks on the data layer of a standard recordable DVD. Over time, these marks become unreadable because organic dyes degrade when exposed to minimal levels of light, heat, and humidity. This means all the data you thought was safely stored could be lost because the discs you used have an average lifespan of only about 3 to 5 years.

The materials and the write process used for the M-DISC were chosen with stability and longevity as the primary goals. Millenniata utilizes chemically stable and heat-resistant materials that are not used in any other DVD or optical disc. These materials cannot be overwritten, erased or corrupted by natural processes. The normal laser energy employed to write DVDs or CDs cannot successfully write to the inorganic and synthetic materials used in the M-DISC.

Data is stored on the M-DISC by physically altering the recording layer and creating permanent voids or holes. DVDs and other optical discs use organic dyes that break down over time, resulting in corrupt and unreadable data. These organic dyes are highly susceptible to temperature, humidity and even sunlight, starting to fade and decay the moment you record data.

Millenniata’s recording process utilizes higher temperatures than any ordinary optical disc. The inorganic data layer materials undergo a physical change during the write process. When the data layer is irradiated by a focused laser, the intense heat generated causes the innermost layers to melt and to move away from the laser spot, creating a hole or pit in the data layer.

These physical pits have two main advantages over dye and phase-change-based optical media; the permanent physical movement of the material, and the permanent optical contrast between light and dark spots. Movement of the material actually enhances the edge of the mark. The nanometer scale location of the edges is critical to the retention of data, with the enhanced edges further building-in longevity. The other advantage is the excellent, permanent optical contrast that comes from making a physical mark. The difference in optical quality between the pit, where there is no material, and the areas adjacent to the pit, where the material remains, provides a definite advantage in retention of data and in ease of reading the disc long into the future. Essentially, pits are better and allows for readable data even after hundreds of years.

While the same size and thickness as a standard DVD, Millenniata's M-DISC looks nothing like the other optical formats on the market today. For one, the top of the disc is brown and the bottom is silver. Also, with there being no reflective or dye layers, you can see right through the disc when placed in front of a bright light.

Here's a photo showing the Millenniata M-DISC next to other optical formats. From the upper left and moving clockwise you have a CD-R, BD-R, M-DISC and DVD-R.

Once written, the M-DISC can be read or played on any DVD drive that supports the DVD+R/RW format. Most DVD drives that were manufactured after 2005 and almost all Blu-ray or BD drives support this format.

Software:

Sadly, the rest of the software is limited to 30 days of usage. Beyond that time, if you want to play DVD movies, backup your computer or edit your photos and videos you will need to upgrade to the full versions of the various applications which, in most cases, aren't exactly cheap.

Samsung's new portable DVD writer was very easy to install. Thanks to its USB 2.0 interface, the entire installation process took only a matter of minutes. With no jumpers to worry about, it was as simple as connecting the USB cable. Once connected to our test computer, it took only a matter of seconds for plug and play to install the necessary drivers. After making sure that the drive was recognized correctly in the Device Manager, I was ready to start installing the software.

Software Installation:

As I mentioned earlier, the SE-208GB comes with a CD full of software from CyberLink. If you have autorun enabled on your computer, the menu shown below will automatically come up when you insert the disc.

As you can see, this menu is pretty straight forward. Clicking on the "Installing Software" tab gives you the option to install the Cyberlink Power2Go Essential packages (Cyberlink Media Suite) as well as trial versions of Cyberlink's PowerDVD and PowerDirector software.

To start the setup process, simply click on the Power2Go button. Once you've accepted the license agreement and selected the destination folder, the entire suite is automatically installed onto your computer. Unfortunately, there is no way to opt out of installing some of the trial software. It can be removed after the fact. However, having the ability to choose which packages you want would have been a nice option.

Documentation:

Samsung has always done things a bit differently when it comes to the documentation. Instead of just throwing a few PDF files onto the software CD, the company has typically gone the extra mile by providing an easy to navigate, HTML based manual. With the SE-208GB, Samsung has taken this one step further by redirecting you to their website where the user's manual is available in a variety of different languages.

The manual starts out with a few pages worth of safety precautions. It continues on by going over the buttons and connectors located on the front and back of the SE-208GB. Everything is labeled clearly and the functions of each are explained very well. This section of the manual also includes information like the drive's system requirements and a list of recommended media.

From here, the manual jumps right into the physical installation of the SE-208GB. The instructions are pretty brief since there really isn't much to do other than plug the USB cable into your computer. Nevertheless, Samsung has provided a few diagrams showing how to hook the drive up to a PC, TV or tablet. The manual finishes up by going over the basic operation of the SE-208GB. Along with information on how to use and maintain the drive, there is a short troubleshooting section containing a list of common problems as well as their solutions.

The SE-208GB also comes with a small "Quick Installation Guide". This small, fold out guide takes the user step by step through the installation process. While a little short on words, Samsung has included a number of diagrams showing how the drive should be hooked up to your PC, TV or tablet and change to AV Connectivity mode. For most people, the "Quick Installation Guide" will be all they'll need to get the SE-208GB up and running.

While CPU, memory, OS and other variables don't often make a huge difference, there are some nonetheless. We have a computer that is used only for testing hardware. We do this so all tests can be compared reliably.

Test System:

For DVD writers the performance tests are broken down into four sections: CD read, CD write, DVD read and DVD write tests. Each benchmark test has been run three times. The score given is an average of the three.

CD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the CD-ROM benchmarks, CD Speed v4.7.7.16 is used to test read speeds, access times and CPU usage. For DAE testing, CD Speed is used to give an overall speed rating.

CD Write Tests: To test the write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write 700MB to our test media. Times are recorded. To test rewrite scores, Nero is used again to time how long it takes to write 400MB of random files and directories. Then CyberLink's InstantBurn is used to test packet writing speeds. The same files are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

DVD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the DVD benchmarks CD Speed v4.7.7.16 is used to test read speeds, access times, and CPU usage.

DVD Write Tests: To test the DVD write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write a 4.38GB image to our test media. Times are recorded. Then CyberLink's InstantBurn is used to test packet writing speeds. For this, 4GB of random files and directories are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - Pressed CD:

For this test I used a pressed CD containing one Mode 1 data track. The disc is 74:38 in size and is full of data and directories.

CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - CD-R Media:

For this test I made a copy of our pressed test CD. I used 12x rated Memorex Gold 74 minute media for the tests.

The SE-208GB's average speed was slightly higher when reading CD-R media. It also had no problems recognizing our 99 minute CompUSA media. The SE-208GB read our test disc from start to finish, reaching a maximum transfer speed of 26.75x.

CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - CD-RW Media:

For this test I made a copy of a pressed test CD. I used some PNY 80 minute CD-RW media for the tests.

The SE-208GB also reads CD-RW media at 24x. As you can see, it had no problems reaching this speed in our tests.

CD Speed v4.7.7.16 (DAE) - Pressed CD:

For this test I used Pure Funk. The CD is almost exactly 74 minutes. This helps to squeeze the maximum performance out of the CD.

Exact Audio Copy can tell us a lot about a drive's capabilities. You can see from the screen shot that while the Samsung SE-208GB supports accurate stream and has the ability to retrieve C2 error information from the CD, it does not cache audio data.

For a portable drive, the SE-208GB did very well in our DAE tests. The drive started out at 10.61x and reached a maximum speed of 24.49x.

CD Speed v4.7.7.16 (DAE) - CD-R Media:

For this test I used a copy of the Pure Funk CD. It's burned onto the same Memorex Gold 74 minute media I used in the CD Speed tests.

The SE-208GB was a little slower when extracting audio from CD-R media. This time around, it reached a maximum DAE speed of 24.21x. So how did it do in CD Speed's advanced DAE tests? Take a look below.

Samsung's portable DVD writer completed CD Speed's advanced DAE tests with an average score of 17.67x. While the drive was able to go through the tests without creating any errors, it was unable to pass all of the on the fly copying tests. If you look at the advanced features, you can see that the SE-208GB was able to read the CD-Text and subchannel data, but failed to read the lead in and lead out sections of the CD.

CD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0 and InstantBurn 5:

For this test I randomly generated 700MB of files and directories to test the time it takes the drive to write and close a CD. All of the files are between 1MB and 25MB in size and no more than 10 directories deep. All of the times below include not only the actual writing time, but the lead in and out times too. This gives a more realistic idea of how long it takes to write a CD.

The SE-208GB has a maximum CD writing speed of 24x. To reach this speed, it uses CAV, or Constant Angular Velocity. With Verbatim's 52x media, the drive started writing at about 10.93x and accelerated, reaching a maximum speed of 24.48x at the end of the session. This gave Samsung's new drive an average writing speed of about 18.14x.

To test the drive's writing times, I wrote our test data to some Verbatim media rated at 52x. The results are below.

The SE-208GB took a little more than five minutes to write an entire 701MB CD. While most of the internal writers we've looked at can do this in half the time, this is pretty good for a portable drive.

To test the drive's writing quality I used Nero CD Speed. This utility can be used to test the number of C1 and C2 errors as well as the jitter level on a disc. For these tests I used a Lite-On LTR-52327S and read the discs at 32x.

Memorex 52x (CMC)

MBI 52x

Verbatim 52x

The SE-208GB's writing quality was very good. By looking at the screenshots, you can see that the discs burned by the drive had a low number of C1 errors. More importantly, there were no C2 errors at all.

For the rewriting tests I created 400MB of files on the hard drive and wrote them in DAO mode using Nero. To test the packet writing speeds I copied and pasted the same files off the hard drive onto a CD-RW disc using InstantBurn from CyberLink. Verbatim's 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW media was used for these tests.

While the SE-208GB uses CAV when writing to CD-R discs, it uses Z-CLV, or Zone CLV, when rewriting at 24x. By looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive uses a total of four "zones." The SE-208GB starts writing at 10x and jumps to 16x at about the 23 minute mark. When the drive reaches the 45 minute mark, it changes to 20x and then to 24x at the 71 minute mark.

Samsung's portable DVD writer did fairly well in our rewriting tests. The drive took 4:27 to write 400MB with Nero and 4:08 to do the same with InstantBurn.

Nero CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - DVD-ROM:

For this test I used a single layer, single sided data DVD-ROM disc that is 4.37GB in size.

The SE-208GB performed pretty well when reading single layer DVD-ROM's. In our tests it started reading at 3.35x and reached a maximum transfer speed of about 8.13x. Unfortunately, like in our CD read tests, the drive's access times were a little high.

Nero CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM:

First, we'll look at the drive's DVD-R and DVD-RW reading performance. For this I made copies of our DVD-ROM test disc using some general use 8x DVD-R and 6x DVD-RW media from Verbatim and then ran our usual DVD read tests with CD Speed. For the DVD-RAM tests, media from Maxell was used. The results are below.

Verbatim DVD-R

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.17x	3.39x	8.25x	170ms	190ms	302ms	16%	30%	56%	62%

Verbatim DVD-RW

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.18x	3.40x	8.25x	171ms	189ms	297ms	17%	21%	51%	59%

Verbatim DVD-R DL

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.09x	3.38x	8.11x	171ms	188ms	302ms	17%	19%	n/a	n/a

The SE-208GB had no problems reading DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media. In all three cases, the drive reached a maximum transfer speed of about 8x.

Maxell 5x DVD-RAM

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	4.65x	2.96x	5.05x	244ms	238ms	385ms	13%	37%	50%	n/a

 

Samsung's new drive has a maximum transfer speed of 5x when reading DVD-RAM discs. By looking at the screenshot you can see that it starts reading at about 3x and then accelerates, reaching 5x at about the 1.7GB mark.

Nero CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - DVD+R and DVD+RW:

Next we'll look at the drive's DVD+R and DVD+RW reading performance. For this I made a copy of our DVD-ROM test disc using some 8x DVD+R and 8x DVD+RW media from Verbatim. I then ran our usual DVD read tests with CD Speed. The results are below.

Verbatim DVD+R

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.17x	3.39x	8.25x	168ms	186ms	308ms	17%	29%	57%	61%

Verbatim DVD+RW

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.19x	3.41x	8.27x	167ms	185ms	307ms	17%	23%	56%	61%

Verbatim DVD+R DL

The SE-208GB's performance was very similar to what we saw with DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media. Once again, the drive reached a maximum transfer speed of about 8x.

Nero CD Speed v4.7.7.16 - DVD-Video:

For these tests I am using the US version of Transformers: The Movie on DVD. The disc is over 4GB and single sided.

	Transfer Speed			Access Times			CPU Usage
	Average	Start	End	Random	1/3	Full	1x	2x	4x	8x
Samsung SE-208GB	6.02x	3.31x	8.06x	149ms	174ms	289ms	14%	17%	37%	59%

The SE-208GB didn't slow down very much when reading single layer DVD videos. In our tests, it reached a maximum speed of 8x when reading both single and dual layer discs.

To see how well the SE-208GB worked as a DVD player, I watched a few scenes from Transformers: The Movie and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith using CyberLink's PowerDVD software. The drive had no problems playing back these movies and was fairly quiet.

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0 and InstantBurn 5:

To test the DVD writing performance of Samsung's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW media. To get the writing times, a 4.38GB image was burned to our test discs using Nero.

The SE-208GB uses P-CAV, or Partial CAV, when writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 8x. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that Samsung's new drive starts writing at about 3.48x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the 4GB mark.

The SE-208GB also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. In both cases, the drive uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum writing speed.

When writing to M-DISCs at 4x, the SE-208GB uses Z-CLV. The drive starts writing at 3.3x and then jumps to 4x at about the 0.85GB mark.

The SE-208GB performed as expected in our DVD writing tests. While not as fast as some of the internal DVD writers we've looked at, it turned in some respectable times with DVD±R and DVD±RW media.

To check the media compatibility of the SE-208GB, I ran a few tests using some of the media available in my area. The media types, along with the average time it took the drive to write our 4.38GB image, are listed below.

So what about writing quality? Using CD Speed we can test a disc's PI (Parity Inner), PIF (Parity Inner Fail) and Jitter rates. For these tests I used a Lite-On iHAS424 and read the discs at 8x with the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8 and 1 respectively.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? When testing with the iHAS424, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

I also put these discs through a "stress test" by reading them back at 16x. By reading these discs back at this speed, we can see if there are any readability issues caused by the number of errors or high levels of jitter.

The SE-208GB's writing quality was pretty good with the DVD+R media from Sony and Taiyo Yuden. In both cases, the PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits when tested with CD Speed. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the discs from MBI and Verbatim. Looking at the screenshots above, you can see that the error rates were fairly high throughout sections of the discs.

While the writing quality varied from one manufacturer to another, the results were pretty good with most of our DVD-R test media. The only exception was Verbatim's 16x media. When tested with CD Speed, the PIF rate was a bit high near the end of the disc.

The writing quality was fairly good for the most part with Milleniata's M-DISC media. The PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits, but, as you can see, there were some readability issues.

To test the SE-208GB's packet writing performance I used InstantBurn 5. Verbatim 6x DVD-RW, Verbatim 8x DVD+RW and Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the SE-208GB, I used DVD+R DL media from Verbatim and Memorex. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

The SE-208GB performed as expected when writing to DVD+R DL media. In our tests, the drive took 22:47 to write 8001MB of data to Verbatim's 8x DVD+R DL discs. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The SE-208GB's writing quality was pretty good with the DVD+R DL media from Verbatim and Memorex. The PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits and there weren't any readability problems.

It's been a number of years since we've seen a new portable DVD writer from Samsung (or any other manufacturer for that matter) and, if the SE-208GB is any indication, the company hasn't lost its touch. This slim, lightweight drive offers a good looking, yet functional design, a long list of features, and some of the fastest reading and writing speeds available on a portable unit.

The SE-208GB performed relatively well when writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media. In our tests, the drive took about 11 minutes to burn an entire 4.7GB DVD. The drive also turned in some respectable times when writing to other types of media. However, the writing quality could have been better with some DVD±R discs. When it came to reading DVD's, the SE-208GB was able to read data and video DVD-ROM's as well as most recordable media at 8x.

Reading CD's wasn't a problem for the SE-208GB either. While its access times were a little higher than I would have liked, the drive read both data and audio CD's at 24x. As a writer, the SE-208GB performed as expected. The drive was relatively quick when writing to CD-R and CD-RW media and its writing quality was quite good.

Samsung's portable DVD writer also has its share of features. A truly portable drive, the SE-208GB is powered completely off a computer's USB bus using a single port. The drive also features Super Link buffer underrun protection and has the ability to set the book type of DVD+R and DVD+R DL media. Last but not least, the SE-208GB supports Samsung's AV Connectivity and Smart Archive technologies which let you connect the drive to an AV device via USB and safely store your data for an extended amount of time.

The Samsung SE-208GB is available now and can be purchased from Amazon for as little as $24.

Highs:

• Writes to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x
• Writes to DVD+RW media at 8x
• Writes to DVD-RW media at 6x
• Writes to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media at 6x
• Writes to M-DISC media at 4x
• Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 8x
• Reads DVD±R, DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
• Reads and writes to DVD-RAM media at 5x
• Features 24x CD-R and CD-RW writing speeds
• Good CD writing quality
• Eject button located on top of drive
• Features Super Link buffer underrun protection
• Supports AV Connectivity and Smart Archive technologies
• Compact and lightweight design
• Powered off the USB bus
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
• Includes software from CyberLink
• Affordably priced

• Questionable writing quality with some DVD±R media
• Cannot set the book type of DVD+RW media
• Lackluster software bundle
• High access times
• Only a 704KB buffer