Bottom Line
The price seems low, but faster drives can be had for less.
Samsung SW-232
WHAT'S HOT: Nothing of note.
WHAT'S NOT: In our tests, the Samsung SW-232 took 3 minutes, 41 seconds to write our 650MB folder of files to CD-R. While that's not off from where a 32X-rated drive should be, the Pacific Digital Mach 48 (our current fastest drive) is 29 percent quicker. This relatively low performance ranks the Samsung drive near the bottom of our field of CD-RW models. It's also quite sluggish writing to CD-RW: The fastest drives burned 100MB of data to CD-RW using packet writing in about 1 minute, 6 seconds--27 percent faster than the Samsung SW-232's showing of 1 minute, 31 seconds.
WHAT ELSE: The SW-232 is one of the few drives currently being sold to offer an 8MB buffer. Such a large buffer isn't necessary in this era of buffer underrun protection; nonetheless, a larger buffer can make for smoother and more efficient burns--in theory, at least. Samsung includes Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.1 and DirectCD 5.1 for mastering and packet-writing applications. The drive comes with helpful, detailed documentation. The company backs this model with a one-year warranty and 12 hours of technical support on weekdays.
UPSHOT: The price seems low, but faster drives can be had for less.
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