Product Reviews

CD/DVD drives

LaCie DVD+/-RW Design by FA Porsche [Computer Shopper]
COMPANY: LaCie	PRICE: £127 inc VAT
RATING:	ISSUE: 195 DATE: May 04

At under £130, this dual-format DVD is the best-priced external DVD writer we've seen. Like many LaCie products, its design is by the German design house FA Porsche. Although it's not the best-looking model - the drive is clad mainly in gunmetal-coloured plastic - it looks fairly smart.

The drive connects to the mains using the supplied power adaptor and to your computer via a USB2 cable. Once it's plugged in, you need only install the supplied software, which includes Roxio's Easy CD and DVD creator and Sonic MyDVD, to get burning. Writing speeds were excellent, as the drive burned our 1.25GB test to DVD-R and DVD+R in under four minutes, to DVD+RW in eight minutes and to DVD-RW in nine minutes 22 seconds. This is the best performance we've seen for write-once media from an external drive and, at this price, it's a clear Best Buy.

By Tom Royal

SPECIFICATIONS:
DVD writer, 4.7GB capacity, 4X DVD+R, 4X DVD-R, 2X DVD+RW, 2X DVD-RW, 16X CD-R, 10X CD-RW, USB2 interface