Vendor Conductor:	VSO Software
Software Used for Testing:	BlindWrite CopyToDVD ConvertXToDVD PhotoDVD
PDF Download:	Download Burner & Media Report

Description

Chapter 3 – Most Reliable Burner analysis

Using the database we will focus now on some important drives. We selected them either by their popularity or their quality.
Here is the chart of the top 20 drives sorted by usage, with the successful completion rate in the right column.

	Unit String	Manufacturer	Uses	Success Ratio
1	HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4163B	LG	775 354	96.12%
2	HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4167B	LG	503 454	95.37%
3	_NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG	NEC	298 247	95.57%
4	PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110D	PIONEER	261 006	95.64%
5	LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S	LITE-ON	257 046	93.09%
6	_NEC DVD_RW ND-3520A	NEC	250 157	96.62%
7	PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-109	PIONEER	241 481	90.16%
8	_NEC DVD_RW ND-3540A	NEC	240 235	97.05%
9	TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-H552B	SAMSUNG	222 123	91.04%
10	PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-108	PIONEER	204 721	92.55%
11	PLEXTOR DVDR PX-716A	PLEXTOR	199 390	96.12%
12	LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S	LITE-ON	194 520	94.69%
13	TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-H552U	SAMSUNG	180 572	91.59%
14	SONY DVD RW DRU-810A	SONY	178 098	97.78%
15	_NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A	NEC	175 742	97.82%
16	_NEC DVD_RW ND-2500A	NEC	166 756	95.65%
17	HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4160B	LG	166 127	94.40%
18	HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4120B	LG	161 958	92.39%
19	HP DVD Writer 640c	HP	159 259	95.93%
20	LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1673S	LITE-ON	144 990	93.85%

It's no surprise to see LG leading the chart with a very popular drive (even if it's not their most recent model). NEC and LG place several drives in the chart, while the most used (and not the best quality one) SONY drive is only at the 14th position.

The average success rate in the database is 95%, so this lets you figure out what is a good or a bad drive. When the drive is over this value, it means the overall performance (regardless of the media) is quite good. When the success rate is around 90% or below, you can seriously consider the drive to be very sensitive about media used or the drive itself is not very good.

On the quality point of view, LG and NEC (for the most recent drives such as 25xx, 35xx, and 45xx models) the results are very good. Plextor and its popular PX-716 is also in a good position. Samsung, Pioneer and Sony are not impressive.

If we don't take into account the popularity of a drive (some drives are too recent and can't be in the top positions with a database running for more than 6 months). Please consider also these drives:

Plextor PX-740 : 97.5%
Toshiba R5112 : 96.8%
BenQ 1640 : 97.,4%

BurnWorld.com is an independent product reviewer and is not associated with any company that is listed on our sites. On occasion we will receive free copies of software for testing & reviewing. We also receive compensation for certain products that are listed on our site. Because of this we would like to mention that this does not alter what we recommend. We take pride in only listing hardware & software that we feel is the best in class and what we would consider a 'safe buy'!