Samsung SE-S204 External DVD Burner

There used to be a time not too long ago when a product manufactured in Korea or China would not have been considered worthwhile. Cheap, yes. Generally nasty, though. I can’t think of any other company that has managed to change my perception of quality from the far east more than Samsung. Whereas I previously would have praised Sony above all, their poor customer service, expensive products and lack of coherence when it comes to standardization has seen them plumb new depths in my ranking of gadget makers. There’s still a PS3 in my future though

The SE-S204 was a bit of an impulse buy, but driven by the fact that installing any Linux distro on the Eee using USB thumb drives can be a bit of a complicated affair. Considering the price for the SE-S204 is just above ZAR 500, the purchase is justified, in my opinion. More compact and lighter than most other external DVD drives, this one has the added benefit of adding LightScribe capabilities and a fast USB 2.0 connection.

It’s a rather unremarkable device in the looks department. A black box with a few highlights of silver and the ubiquitous blue flashing light all electronics seem to be fitted with nowadays. The package contains the drive unit itself, a USB cable, power adapter and Euro plug, stand and software bundle. The software is a copy of Nero for Windows systems. That will remain unused.

The stand is designed to minimize the amount of desktop real estate the drive takes up.

If you’re using it with an Eee, the solution is a lot more elegant:

Specifications are probably the most important when discussing an optical drive. This one will read most any disc thrown at it, including DVD-RAM. To ensure the best compatibility with optical recording media, Samsung has enhanced the drive with an automatic update facility to retrieve firmware upgrades directly from their website. For this to function, the bundled software needs to be installed on a computer the SE-S204 is connected to. Read and write speeds are impressive, maxing out at 48x reading or writing a CD, 16x reading a DVD and 20x writing to a DVDR and 12x reading DVD-DL media and 16x writing to DVD+R DL. With the right kind of media, LightScribe may be used to label discs. With Dual-Layer media support, those large moviefiles can be more conveniently backed up.

I’ve used the drive quite a bit with the Eee and am impressed by its quiet operation and the overall read speeds I’ve observed. It’s hardly portable, filling up any carefully-packed gadget bag to the brim. Another cable and adapter, remember. Other than that, it’ll make a decent backup drive to move between machines or as an addition to a system that doesn’t have a built-in optical drive like the Eee.