External DVD Burners Review

What Can External DVD Burners Do?


External DVD Burners are portable burners that can read, write or rewrite CDs and DVDs for storage or sharing. Unlike internal drives, they can be moved from computer to computer and use an external power source.

Depending on the software used, a burner will:

Make Photo Discs
Make Read-Only Music or Audio CDs
Burn Home Movies
Create Back-up Copies of Media Library
Utilize Re-Writable Discs
Play DVD Movies or CDs
Convert Formats
Back-up Data Files
Create Karaoke Discs
Share Slideshows
Print Unique Disc Labels
Play DVD-ROM or RAM discs
In this site, you'll find articles related to DVD Burners, as well as comprehensive reviews and a side-by-side comparison to help you make an informed decision on which External DVD Burner is right for you.



At TopTenREVIEWS - We do the research so you don't have to.

What to Look for in an External DVD Burner.
When choosing a DVD burner, ports are important aspects to consider. Look to see whether your computer has a USB 2.0 or 1.1 or FireWire port then choose a DVD player that will work with that port. Keep in mind that a USB 1.1 is extremely slow and that ports can be added at a reasonable price. If you use a unique disc type, such as DVD-RAM, CD-Text or CD+G look to see that these formats are supported.

Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate external DVD Burners:



Feature Set – We evaluated all of the features available with the DVD burner such as whether they have the ability to copy to dual layer discs and if they are compatible with popular DVD copying software. We also looked at what kind of software package comes with the hardware and noted the types of ports they require.
Burner Speed – Burning speed is especially significant when choosing a DVD burner. However, the type of blank media used to read/write/rewrite also impact speed.
Help & Support – This ranking depends on how quick the product manufacturer responded to our email inquiries about their product. We sent an email to the technical support team of every product we reviewed. This criterion also considers some of the other help/support contact methods available such as live chat, telephone, FAQs, a searchable knowledge base, troubleshooting guides, easy driver downloads, etc.

See the full review here.

Always handy to have an external device around. Have had the Lite-on 201AP for a while.

Thanks for the review. Reading it now.

I've got a Samsung SE-S084C for the rare times I need to do something from my laptop or netbook. Works great for my needs which, so far, have been once.

Thanks for the information, lots of good stuff.