Lite-On SOHW-1633S (Dual Layer DVD Burner)

Lite-On is certainly a respected company in the optical drive market. The company has OEM deals with Sony and other major players in the optical drive market. Lite-On has even branched into consumer electronics with its optical drive technologies. (Check out Shane's review of one of these products here.) I think one thing that makes Lite-On stand out, though, is its good brand combined with great value. When you buy Lite-On drives, you usually get a good quality product for a good price. It seems as if Lite-On reduces the cost of its products by doing simple things, like making the packaging only as big as it needs to be and putting the main installation manual on a CD only. I think most people can appreciate these things if it saves them money, even if it's only a little bit.

Being a major player in the optical drive market, Lite-On is no stranger to the latest technologies available. For instance, Lite-On currently offers several drives capable of writing to DVD+R DL media and one of these drives (the SOHW-1653S) offers write speeds as fast as any other drive available today for almost any media. Today, I will actually be looking at the SOHW-1633S, which was Lite-On's top-of-the-line model until the 1653S was released. The 1633S simply offers slower write speeds for DVD-R and DVD+R DL media.

The SOHW-1633S is no slouch, though. Along with 2.4x DVD+R DL, 8x DVD-R, and 4x DVD±RW writing, it offers top-notch DVD+R writing at 16x. Of course, it is rated to read media at equally impressive speeds. Lite-On also adds in its own buffer underrun prevention technology, SMART-BURN, and other features to make the burning process as easy as possible. To top it off, Lite-On throws in a great software bundle, featuring software from Ahead Software, makers of the very popular Nero suite of applications. To help its users maximize compatibility with various DVD players, Lite-On also provides its own "bitsetting" utility (get it here). Bitsetting makes it possible to make a burned DVD look like a DVD-ROM, i.e., more like a stamped DVD, and this is useful if a DVD player doesn't recognize burned media.