So you’re looking at buying a CD or DVD burner. A burner (also called a recorder) is an optical disc device that records/burns onto blank writeable CD or DVD media. Burners usually come in either internal or external enclosures.
A CD or DVD burner can cost anywhere from $50 to over $350. A typical internal DVD burner will cost $100 and an external DVD burner around $150. Some common brands are Sony, HP, Samsung, LaCie, Toshiba, Pioneer and ASUS.
The two main factors to consider before purchasing a CD or DVD burner are the burner type and write speed. The main burner types are DVD-RAM, DVD+/-RW, DVD+/-RW Dual Layer, CD-RW/DVD-ROM (Combo), DVD-RW, DVD+R and more recently Blu-ray. Some common write speeds are 24x (CD-R), 48x (CD-R), 8x (DVD+R DL), 8x (DVD+R), 8x (DVD-R DL), 8x (DVD-R), 16x (DVD+R) and 16x (DVD-R). Generally the faster the burner the quicker a CD or DVD can be burned, although you may still be restricted by the blank media.
Other considerations would be the interface, enclosure type, read speeds, recording modes and platform support. Different interfaces include USB 2.0, Serial ATA, USB and IDE / EIDE. Enclosure type can be internal, external, proprietary or plug-in module for a laptop. Common recording modes include packet write, multi-session, track-at-once, disc-at-once and session-at-once. The supported platform can be PC, Mac or Unix. Finally if you’re look specifically for a DVD burner then you should also consider the supported DVD formats such DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video and DVD-9.
