After reviewing each drive separately we will try to make a first comparison according to its supposed specs.

As we can see almost all drives have "identical" specs, with some minor differences that will be explained later at our review. The most noticeable difference is the manufacturing date, one could say its OK since optical storage technology has reached its upper limit and has nothing more to offer in terms of reading/writing speeds (as least with external slim USB optical disc drives).

Since we are making direct comparison between the drives we will place scoring for each drive.

The best drive gets 9 points, the "worst" will get 1 point. Lets see how this translates from the above table...

1. C1/C2/PIE/PIF scan ability adds 2points for each drive
2. Lightest drive gets 9 points, the heaviest 1 point
3. Smaller drive gets 9 points, the biggest 1 point
4. Cheapest drive gets 9 points, the priciest gets 1 point
5. Drives with no official firmware update/support get 0 points, while the ones with official website/firmware support get 5 points.
6. Extra features also count "positive" for a drive to get higher score, 2 points for TypeC connection and 2 points for extra ports or compatibility with Android like the HLDS 96Y.

Making some quick calculations, we find that the HLDS PortableDVD has the highest features score due to its: small dimensions/volume, connectivity, official firmware update/support and extra features like C1/C2 and Android compatibility. The best featured drive comes of course with a higher price than other Chinese based drives, which isn't so high if you account all the positives.