Sony http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118030 Plextor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827249054 Cant decide. Is the plextor more expensive simply because it has lightscribe, or because it has lightscribe but is just the superior burner? The Sony is more popular both here and neweeg, but I question is this more because of cost to performance ratio or performance period? Popularity aside I believe I have heard a good share of happy plextor owners here. Which drive is likley to provide a more reliable burn, and which one is likley to provide a more reliable read on scratched discs?
If I recomended anything, it would be this LG: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136168 I don't like the sony burners as much as the LG stuff. Plextor drives are just the competitor's drives with custom firmware. They usualy don't last very long...just long enough to be out of warantee. The advantage is not in burning, but in reading. Plextors tend to read through scratches, dirt, dust, and cheap media better than other units.
I've had so many nightmares with Sony drives...they always seem to die within a year, and even LG drives read bad quality/scratched/etc discs better. I know they get good reviews, but these reviews are almost always from the first month, and never seem to be a direct compairison to the competition. My last sony burner wouldn't even burn to the Sony media that came with it...the plextor had no troubles. The only sony drives that I still have working are the one in my newest PS2 slim (less than a year old, used only a few times), and the one in my PS3 (and we all know how unreliable those are).
Well I wasnt going on newegg feedback alone. I do pay attention to it, because i feel it is of some value, but it seems the Sonys are pretty much one of the most popular drives anywhere I go.
As far as I know the Optiarcs are still the NEC designs, not had much input from Sony yet, thankfully. All the actual Sonys were pretty shoddy. I have always had good success with LG drives. The latest drive from LG has been review-bombed because it has an ad program installed to the drive, but it's pretty easy to get rid of, I'd sooner spend 30 seconds removing an annoying (but harmless) program than have to replace an optical drive.
The ad program is in the drive itself??? So even if I dont use the driver from the cd its still going to infect my pc if i use the plug and play driver? Im assuming its something little and stupid like the ask toolbar which is commonly flagged as a virus?
It generates ads for LG stuff. As far as I know the automatic driver install includes the software - I've not seen it myself as I haven't bought their latest drive.
It was there for a little while, but it has already been removed from the newest drives. LG released an official utility to kill this without risk to your warantee. It was a dumb idea, they learned their lesson.
