Price check: DVD burners

Posted on 20 Jun 2003 at 11:30

Barely two months ago, when we last looked at DVD burners, the cheapest around was a -R burner at £121. Now they've broken the £100 barrier.

The commoditising powers of Sony and HP and their +R format have enabled drives of this flavour to dominate the lower range.

The Lite-On LDW-401S is a +RW burner for a piffling £97.18 from ebuyer.

If -R is important to you, then Buysafe will sell you the Panasonic LFD-311 for £106.91.

The temperature we took for multiformat drives has also fallen. At the time the best we found was the NEC ND-1300A DVD+/-RW, for around £195. It was still the cheapest on our search, but you can now pick it up for £115 from Dabs.

If you're fresh out of spare 5.25in bays, then the cheapest external option was the ARCHOS Dex, at £214.29. Not any more.

Now, just £163 will get you the external (via USB) Aopen EHD-2412U, from Dabs. This one is again +RW.

The all-format Freecom FX-10 is another USB drive. It's £193.01 from Dabs.

The cheapest FireWire external drive we say two months back was the Formac Devideon Superdrive for £249.99 (excluding delivery) from Micro Anvika. Now the same vendor will sell you the better performing LaCie d2 for £235.

And if you really don't know what the word budget means, then splash out on the Hewlett Packard 100i DVD-R from Technoworld.com which still costs £500.

With the DVD Alliance having just announced an 8-speed write spec, expect to get even more DVD bangs for your bucks in the coming months.

Found something cheaper or better? Then let the rest of us know by commenting on this story.

Author: Matt Whipp