14 DAY TRIAL // Seeing how Blu-ray disks and drives are still quite far from becoming mainstream, DVD burners are still the main optical storage and multimedia playback solution for most consumers, especially those from the entry-level and mid-end segments. Knowing this, as well as consumer preference for portability and compactness, Sony Optiarc America released, in the United States, the half-height internal AD-7260S, as well as the external, USB-enabled slim DRX-S77U.
The AD-7260S internal DVD burner has a 2MB buffer, operates on the SATA interface and, naturally, supports reading and writing of multiple DVD and CD formats. The actual writing speeds it can achieve are of 8x for DVD+RW, of 6x for DVD-RW, of 48x for CD-R, of 32x for CD-RW, of 12x for DVD+R/-R DL and DVD-RAM disks and of 24x for DVD+R/-R.
The ability to scribe data is just half of what this drive can do, however, the other half is the ability to personalize each disk with individual labels, thanks to the LightScribe technology. Color options include beige and black.
The second device, the compact, external DRX-S77U, has more color options than its sibling, coming with bezels colored white and black, as well as pink and gold for end-users that like their drives colorful. The unit itself measures 136.5 x 19 x 146.5 mm, operates on the USB 2.0 interface, and has the same 2MB of buffer memory as the AD-7260S.
Furthermore, while it lacks LightScribe, it comes bundled with Nero 9 and boasts writing speeds decent enough for a drive limited to communicating with the host PC at only 480Mbps. Specifically, the scribe speeds reach 24x for CD-R and CD-RW, 8x for DVD+R/-R and DVD+RW, 6x for DVD-RW and DVD+R/-R DL and 5x for DVD-RAM.
Unfortunately, the prices of these two products are unknown, but they should not remain so for long, considering that both the AD-7260S and DRX-S77U should already be reaching US stores.