AmazonBasics USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive Black

"Amazon Basics" it says on the packaging and on the writer but on opening the packaging "basic" is the last adjective I would apply to the unit.
The drive is an attractive black box with a mini USB connector on the rear alongside an input socket for a 5volt 2amp external power supply. The latter is not included with the drive, indeed it is not needed as the power is drawn from the USB socket on the host PC.
The front of the drive sports a disc eject button alongside a power and activity led.
Connecting the drive to my PC was a breeze using the supplied cable and just as soon as the "windows has detected new hardware" and "your new hardware is ready to use" messages had been dismissed we were in business.
Pressing the eject button caused the drive drawer to open about an inch allowing it to be pulled open to allow a disc to be placed in the skeleton tray. Easing the drawer inwards and it latched into place.
Disc access seemed reasonably quick and the drive was not particularly noisy in use.
I mentioned earlier that the drive contained a power input socket and in my experience an external power supply may be needed with certain laptops. I have found that some laptops do not have the capability to supply sufficient power via the USB bus. This is certainly the case with external hard drives especially if trying to transfer large amounts of data. The computer gives up the ghost with a message saying something like "the power capability of the USB port has been exceeded". I'm not sure whether writing large mounts of data to a DVD would cause the same problem but it's a point worth noting.
Overall then, a well put together piece of kit that I'm more than happy to give five stars to.

This is a light and compact DVD writer. Its footprint is not much bigger than a standard CD jewel case and it's as thick as two CD jewel cases stacked upon one another. It's powered by a dual USB cable (i.e. it uses two USB ports), but it also works using just one USB connector. There is an option to add a power adapter (not included) if your PC cannot provide enough power via the USB ports. However, I would suggest that most modern PCs will not require one. It has a spring operated front loading tray and it comes with a copy of Nero 9 Essentials. When connected to my laptop the drivers were automatically downloaded and installed - plug and play simplicity. It plays back video DVDs and CDs and it doesn't overheat.

DVD and CD burning performance with a laptop running MS Vista with 2GB of RAM and using both USBs:

4.7GB of data to DVD+R at x8 speed: 13 minutes.
700MB of data to CD-R at x24 speed: 5 minutes.

My laptop's performance was not affected in any way when the discs were burning.

In summary, this is a small, affordable and fit for purpose DVD writer.

This product arrived in a brown box containing the drive itself, a USB cable, an instruction book and Nero 9 CD writing software for Windows. Pretty good value I think! The drive itself is nice and compact and quiet in operation. The device takes all of its power from the USB sockets on the computer so is very portable indeed.

I plugged the drive to my ageing HP laptop - the DVD writer on which has become a little unreliable over the last year or two. After a few seconds while Windows 7 installed the necessary drivers I was ready to go. I inserted a blank DVD -R from a well known supermarket and a few seconds later the Windows write CD dialogue came up. I dragged about 3 and a half Gb worth of data on to the disc and hit burn to disc. About 8 minutes later the disc was ejected complete. I have repeated this with several other brands of DVD and CD and the results have been flawless. When I had finished I simply unplugged the USB cable and continued to work on the computer.

Amazon have produced a very impressive package here that makes an ideal addition to a drive less netbook, or as a replacement for an ageing internal drive.