Pioneer DVR610A DVD/CD Writer

Item Purchased: Pioneer DVR610A DVD/CD Writer
Location Purchased: Videoguys.com
Price: $55 + shipping

Review: The DVD burner that came with my computer was an out-of-production Sony drive that was sold for cheap to all of the computer manufacturers and no longer supported by the company. Sometimes you can buy these drives off of ebay or other places for less than $20. There is a reason for this.

After only a few months of burning DVD media, the drive stopped burning DVD media. It would burn a sliver of media and then stop after a few minutes, giving me an error message. All this was okay since I could still burn CDs, but every once in a while, you have a larger job than 800 mb can handle. I work with audio and photo a lot and like to keep my computer free of unwanted clutter. Not to mention I am a neurotic organizer, so I felt naked without my ability to back up and copy large amounts of data.

Finally, I went shopping for a new DVDR drive. Originally, I was going to buy Pioneer's DVR-100 model when I came across this drive.

The DVR610A is the same drive as the DVR-100. The only difference is that it is bundled with less software. Something tells me that the software companies paid to have the DVR-100 advertised more prominently than the DVR610A because it took a bit of digging to find this drive. Every computer magazine that reviewed DVD writers placed the DVR-100 near the top of the list without even mentioning it's twin brother. Good thing I am such a frugal shopper and am willing to do my research when I buy a new product. Everywhere I looked, the DVR610A was nearly half the price of the DVR-100 model.

The performance of the drive is so-far so-good. It actually burns a bit faster than my Sony drive did. There is firmware and driver support easily accessible on Pioneer's website and the installation is as simplistic as it gets.

So, now that I can burn about 4.7GB of data in about 15 minutes or less, I am, once again, happy and my computer is once again free of clutter.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Buy one! LINK