ASUS SDRW-08D2S-U LITE external 8X DVD writer, Mac Compatible, M-DISC support, Disc Encryption, Unlimited Webstorage(12 months), NERO Backitup, E-Green, E-Media

I bought this "ASUS SDRW-08U7M-U Ultraslim" as my current 15 year old External DVD Drive has started to randomly refuse blank discs it has always accepted. At first glance it looks nice, its light, looks a bit flimsy, but it's not like I'm going to be tossing it around the place. The discs need to be pressed onto a spindle until they click securely into place (much like a PS1 Console), these are actually better as there's no chance of scratching or damaging a CD.The only downside to this DVD Drive is the included Y Cable, it is only 18 inches in length, perfectly fine if you are using a Laptop. But I am using a desktop PC and I have to use books to prop it up to reach my USB ports. There are 2 USB Connectors, the 2nd provides additional power if needed (my PC only needed me to use the one, some low power laptops may need it, so make sure you have 2 USB ports side by side or within 4 inches of one another).I installed Power2Go 8 from the bundled Software disc as I had previously used a Trial and liked its functionality, its a quick no fuss burning Software but has advanced options if needed.Also I liked the inclusion of 2 Verbatim DVDR ''M-Discs'', will be the only time that I will use these as the DVDR M-Discs are hard to purchase and have little use to me, standard blank DVDs are fine. I have a collection of family photos going back to the 1920's so will use them for that as there supposed to last a lifetime. I ripped a CD and extraction speed was slower than my older drive, but its what it is, but track quality was 100% and that's the main thing. Burning DVDs was quick though and it accepted all the discs, disc verification afterwards gave a 100% pass. My copying and burning was silent enough, all depends on surface you have it on.

I had to make a bunch of videos very quickly in december for a christmas play. I didn't have long, so I needed to use a no nonsense editor and a no-nonsense writer.For the editor, I used kdenlive. It's pretty much the standard editor for doing videos on Linux these days. It's basic, but functional. However, it does produce very good quality MP4s. To burn the DVDs I used DeVeDeNG to make the DVD, and (I think xfburn) to write the disks.The moment I plugged in the drive, it started spinning, and then just added itself to the list of drives. No drivers needed. then, when I loaded up xfburn, it saw the drive, knew exactly what it was, its speeds etc, everything.so, I popped in a blank, and hit "write". i'd bought a pack of 10, because I remember the failures from years ago when I last had to write DVDs and CDs... But the first DVD popped out absolutely perfectly. So, I did the second movie, and sure enough, it popped out a few minutes later completely perfect.Took it to my Sony DVD player downstairs, and it booted and played first time. Took it back to the duplicators, and they were able to read and duplicate my master copy with zero issues.I've used it to back up a few more things, like photos, since then. It's worked perfectly every time. A very reliable, quite quiet, drive. Very pleased.

My latest laptop doesn't have an optical drive as often seems to be the case these days. There are occasions when I still need the capability so I looked up these external drives. I realise streaming is one of the more popular means of viewing media in this day & age (I stream an awful lot myself), but it's not like everyone instantly stopped using CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray media, or completely stopped using them to store, or move important data either. 22 years ago my first laptop had a removable 3.5" floppy drive & CD-Rom drive, (only one of the drives could be in the dock at a time obviously & a reboot was required to swap drives too). It worked well enough but it wasn't particularly convenient especially at a time when hard drives were measured in mere MB's, not the TB's of today. Despite also owning multiple USB external HDD's, dozens of various data cards, & flash drives, etc., too, I still feel dropping optical drives completely was a bit of a backwards step personally.Ergo, this external drive has already come in quite handy for me. My laptop instantly discovered the drive & it immediately installed the relevant software drivers too. The drive was ready for use in seconds. It does the job well enough for its rated purpose but it's pretty noisy without the chassis of a laptop to dampen the vibration & noise of the spin speed. (The design is essentially an optical drive from a laptop inside an external case). It's supplied with a splitter cable in case you need the extra power from a second USB port when writing to discs, but thus far a single USB3 port has supplied enough power for both read & write operations on my newer laptop. (Whether you need to use 2 USB ports will come down to individual hardware). It looks good & seems well made externally, although the internal tray isn't particularly robust, & could very easily become damaged or inoperable if not exercising care!! External optical drives can get VERY warm too, especially when writing but this is to be expected. For the price, can't really grumble.Overall, not bad for light or occasional use, but I wouldn't rely on one like a dedicated internal drive in all honesty. Build quality could be better!! However, I would still recommend one if your device doesn't have an internal optical drive & you find yourself in need of one. 4/5.