Lately we have been testing 18x and 20x DVD burners, which turn out to be mainstream as soon the major PC (HP, Dell, etc) makers decide to use them as a replacement for the 16x drives in their PCs. However, the 16x burning speed for recordable DVDs had been the limit and possibly not without a reason. Higher speeds push hardware to its limits and the overall control of the burning procedure is more difficult, while media are also required to perform satisfactorily and within specs while under extreme conditions. For many reasons therefore, a 16x DVD burner is a sane solution for your daily recording needs.

The LiteOn SH-16A7S comes with a SATA interface which is a positive point, considering that the latest motherboards offer better support for SATA compared to the traditional PATA interface.

To summarize the performance of the drive, we should mention its very good error correction capabilities with defected DVDs, the fast reading speed with CDs and DVDs, as well as the very good writing quality with specific recordable DVD media - something we have not seen when testing the faster DVD burners of late.

On the weak points, we should mention the average CD error correction, the strange behavior of the drive with a popular DVD+R DL brand where it refused to burn the disc, as well as some writing quality issues with DVD rewritable media.

The SH-16A7S can be found at around US$40-50.