best bang for your buck external dvd burner

can anyone recommend me a fast and good external dvd burner that won't hurt my wallet? around $50 is okay.
preferably the slim external dvd burners. going to use it for my laptop. thanks!

 

A USB enclosure housing a typical desktop burner is probably going to be the cheapest route... the other day I used an "enclosure" that was just a small PCB with USB/sata/IDE/power connections that someone had ordered off the web. These will tend to be bigger.

 

The Slim ones will be slower as they mostly run just off USB power.

You'll need one with a separate power supply if you require speed - I have one that was 40 Pounds... LiteOne or something like that....its pretty fast
(That was bought over a year ago... over 2 years ago I think)

 

Liteon? For the sake of technology, don't ever recommend Liteon again.

When I was in a desktop forum, general consensus was that Liteon was one of the wort brands available.

 

Its just what I have.... I think it was the cheapest and had the best speed - so far its worked very well for me...

 

I get 8x on my external slim drive. It has another cable for extra power, but I haven't even taken that out of its baggie.

 

DVDs? CDs?

Post all, will you...
My internal drive get's 24x and my external gets 48x - I think that's CDs though...
Can't find DVD speeds at the moment... but I think its either 12 or 16 for my external drive.

 

Just buy one off craigslist. They are like 10 bucks.

 

Apparently, their reliability and quality is really bad...

 

Well, maybe I was lucky - I didn't read any reviews...
Although, they do claim to get a lot of good reviews... what does it matter? I was on the lookout for a cheap drive as the one in my old laptop had failed... this did the trick and continues to work for me

Maybe I'm lucky - maybe the USB drives are better... maybe I'm not enough of a "power user" - who knows.

To OP:
Do research

 

I've never had any problems with any of my many lite-on burners in the past. CZ seems to be a little dramatic...... check out the many reviews here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010100005 50001336&name=Lite-On

and here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...00598 50001336&name=Lite-On&SpeTabStoreType=1

most 4 out of 5 stars some 5 out of 5

 

All I know is that the desktop forum I used to be on, a lot of people had LiteOn drives fail on them.

 

How about either this Samsung or Pioneer.

I'd probably get the Samsung, which should be fine off USB power so long as you plug in both ends of the Y cable that comes with it. The Pioneer may work from USB power, it's supposed to, but I have a more expensive Pioneer that requires the Y cable it comes with. This less expensive Pioneer only comes with a straight cable and a power adapter, so YMMV.

There are some lesser brands like Rosewill at lower or similar prices, but meh... you get what you pay for. Personally, I went to Best Buy to see which of their stocked slim drives had the best build quality. I don't remember specifics, but they also had an HP and an LG that had really cheap, flexible plastic designs. The Pioneer XD09 I ended up with has a nice solid, metal construction, and is about as small as it can get. It looks like it might be available near your price range now, too. When I bought it, it was around $90, since nobody but Best Buy had it yet.

 

DVD's get 8x while burning.

Post all what? It costs over $50, so I'm not recommending it. I only posted to say you can get decent speeds with usb power.

 

Well, but your original post could have been that you get 8x speed burning CDs - I suppose everybody assumed it was DVDs, but still - its better to write all in the first post.