We Record the Winners
Beyond offering a breakdown of the individual test scores for your perusal, we have formulated overall scores to summarize the burners' performance using both "dash" and "plus" formats. We deem DVD-R media performance (copying videos) the most popular use of recordable drives, and therefore we weighted it at 70 percent of each score, while the -RW performance (packet reading and writing) accounts for the remaining 30 percent. The average result for "dash" performance was 76 among external units, 74 among internal, while "plus" results averaged 84 for external and 86 for internal.
The top-performing "dash"-format external drives are the Sony DRX-510UL, with an overall score of 80 (and an overall "plus" score of 80), and the TDK Indi DVD 4x +/- External Burner and Microsolutions Backpack, each with overall scores of 78 (and overall "plus" scores of 89 and 85, respectively).
In overall "plus"-format scores, the LaCie d2 (external) and Dual (internal) drives came in first and third, respectively, scoring 98 and 94 points (with 75 and 76 for "dash" performance, respectively). The internal Memorex drive came in second for overall "plus" performance, with a 97 (and a 76 for overall "dash" performance). These drives are all dual-format and inherently have an advantage over single-format drives.
CD-burning performance with all of the tested drives was relatively consistent, so we decided we would neither print the timings nor figure them into the overall scores. CD-R write duration on all drives was just under 2 minutes with 170MB of files, while read times averaged 1 minute 4 seconds.