Top 5 CD-RW Drives

Finally! The 4X speed limit signs have been taken down from the CD-Rewritable highway. In their place are shiny new placards announcing that the latest drives can rewrite at 8X to 10X--a nice complement to the CD-Recordable ratings of 8X to 12X for most of today's drives. In the real world, these new speeds mean you can do a backup to CD-RW in just over half the time it would take with a drive that's rated to write to CD-RW at 4X.

This month we actually have an 8X-rated CD-RW drive in our Top 5. The doubled rewrite speed rating comes courtesy of Yamaha's surprisingly affordable 8X/8X/24X CRW-8824EZ, which at $250 costs only $30 more than the average 8X/4X/32X writer. Partially because of its mediocre read speed, the CRW-8824EZ couldn't nudge Plextor's $200 PlexWriter 8/4/32A off its perch at the top, but it did grab number two, making it this month's prime choice for CD-RW-focused users.

Faster CD-RW speed isn't the only technological debut in this month's Top 5 CD-RW Drives. QPS's portable Que Fire provides us with our first look at an IEEE 1394 (aka FireWire and I.Link) drive. We were impressed with the external unit's hot-pluggable convenience and quick 8X/4X/32X performance, which is twice the CD-R speed of parallel port and Universal Serial Bus external drives. However, the Que Fire's $450 price is too steep for the average user--even though it includes both a carrying case and a three-port IEEE 1394 adapter--so you won't find it on our chart.

This month's other new CD-RW contender is actually an old friend in a new guise--Plextor's PlexWriter 12/4/32--now available in a stylish, aqua-and-silver external SCSI case that reminded us of Apple's IMac. The external model's performance was a hair faster than that of the internal drive we reviewed in March, but its $450 price renders it more suitable for those who prize the flexibility of having an external SCSI drive, and it didn't make our chart.

With a $50 price drop to $249, the Sony Spressa Professional CRX140E/CH maintained its grip on the number three spot, while the $249, 8X/4X/32X HP CD-Writer Plus 9100i slipped to fourth. A $30 price drop to just $199 makes the fifth-ranked 8X/4X/32X Acer CRW-8432a the most inexpensive drive on our chart--by a hair.

Good Things Coming

While the Yamaha CRW-8824EZ was the first drive out of the starting gate with improved rewrite speed, it will soon be joined by a flood of fast new drives. Plextor, for example, has announced its PlexWriter 12/10/32A, the first drive out with a 10X rewrite speed. The promising new Plextor was announced too late to be included in this month's Top 5; look for it in next month's edition. Sony will also release a 12X/8X/32X CD-RW drive by the end of the summer.