Survey on which 16x DVD burner to buy.
 

I've had better luck with my NEC 3520 (I forget, it's on my home computer)
than any Pioneer drive I've owned (A03, A04, A08). Here's a thread that rates DVD burners :

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=135828

The NEC, or BenQ would be a good buy. However I've always had good experience with the Pioneer myself. The 109 is going fairly cheap these days, yet I've used the authoring line myself.

The Plextor PX-716SA is the best drive out there no dought about it. You'll rarly burn a coaster with any DVD media with drive. I absolutely love it. Also the updateable bios feature means it will take much longer for the drive to become obsolete compared with other drives. It is a little pricey but worth the money.

I would recommend a BenQ DW1640 over the Plextor. In fact, Plextor seems to trust BenQ, too: their new 740 is a rebadged BenQ. If you want a specific reason to buy BenQ, I would say it is because it allows you to bitset the booktype. In other words, you can make your DVDs appear to be DVD-ROMs rather than DVD-R or DVD+R. This is great feature if you have to play your DVDs on old set-top players. They also update their firmware frequently, allowing you to get better burns on different media.

I bought mine for $50 at Newegg and I could not be happier.

had no probs with my pioneer 109, cracking burner and no coasters in ages!!!!!

i have the nec 3520a, plextor 716a, 1 liteon 1673 and a 832.

so far i love my liteon. there are DVDs that both plextor and nec can't read that liteon can. liteon DVD burners have NEVER EVER burnt a coaster but both NEC&Plextor have.

i highly recommend the liteons =).

BenQ DW1640 still available?
 

I was just about to buy one when I saw that NewEgg is out of stock on ALL BenQ burners. So far the only other place I've found the DW1640 is eBay. Anybody know if this one has been discontinued? I think my Sony drive is finally dying.

I'll look into the Liteon and NEC drives mentioned in this thread, but I had just made up my mind on the BenQ, and it takes me a long time to make decisions.


Edit: Update - 'guess the BenQ drive is still rare in the states. I bought the NEC 3540A instead because of it's slightly better ratings for burning CD-R discs. Still, it was a close call.