DVD burners are one of the hottest components for personal computer system. They are extremely versatile and can be used to create a music mix CD, archive digital photos or make a DVD of family home videos. With the media costs also being extremely affordable, they are also used heavily as disposable data transfer media similar to how floppies were used years ago. But with all the different models available on the market, how does one know which DVD burner they should buy?
DVD burners are marketed with a huge number of speed listings for the various media types they support. 16x, 40x, 8x, 48x, 2.4x and 24x are just some of the numbers that consumers will see listed. The problem is that these are the maximum speeds for the specific media. The actual speed of recording can vary greatly between two drives listed with the same maximum recording speed. Because of this, I set out to compare various drives currently on the market to determine their real world performance.
A total of eleven drives are being used in this comparison. Using the Nero CD/DVD Speed application, I measured the real world recording and reading performance of the drives. Since most people care how long it takes to record a disc more so then reading or playing back a disc, I've listed the total time it took to create a data disc using each of the following media: CD-R, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+R DL and DVD+RW.
