Originally posted by: Gerbil333
Originally posted by: xxsk8er101xx
Does anyone have the NEC 3500A dvd burner? any problems? issues? results? hapy with it? like it? and so on heh ... i just bought it on newegg for 73 bucks and i bought the newegg ext. warranty for 5 bucks and i got free newegg dvd+r's with it too.
I bought because it was one of the top burners available with what i was looking for. it was that or buslink.
First off, asking if something is good
after ordering it isn't too intelligent
I've had my NEC 3500A for over a month now.
Pros:
-No coasters after 60+ DVD-Rs
-Extremely quiet
-The door opens and closes smoothly
-Nice looking front bezel
Cons:
-Poor CD-R media support; I've only found one brand of CD-Rs that the 3500A can actually burn at its advertised speed of 48x. It has forced all other brands of CD-Rs to be burned at
only32x :|
-Slow CD/CD-R reading speed. My old Lite-On 40x12x48x CD-RW drive (2 years old) outperformed the NEC 3500A by reading a full 700mb CD-R roughly 45 seconds quicker!
-DVD ripping speed is limited to only
5x. Sure, it can read a normal DVD at 16x, but at 5x, it's painfully slow for DVD ripping.
-Only one color status LED: Green. Other burners have switched between green and orange or red to indicate if they're reading or writing. I don't really care about this, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
When shopping for a DVD burner, I'd hoped to only have a single optical drive...one that could read and write DVD's and CD's at maximum rates. According to the specs, the NEC 3500A met my needs. However, the specifications lie. It can't rip DVDs at 16x, and it can't burn CD-Rs at 48x.
The 3500A burns DVDs great, and it's a very solid and quiet drive, but it turned out to be much less than what I'd expected. So, I ordered a
Lite-On 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive last week. Now I can rip DVDs and write CD-Rs at full speed
As far as I know, there's currently no DVD burner capable of meeting my requirements (particularly the CD-R burning speeds). The only solution if you want maximum speed DVD
and CD burning is to either have a separate drive for those needs, or to spend more $$$ on high quality media that the 3500A will burn at 48x...when another drive could have burned cheaper media at 52x with ease.
Edit:
After seeing my post, I realized I put a lot of effort into discussing the negative qualities of the 3500A. I'm actually very happy with the drive, and I anticipate firmware updates to enable better media support. However, I grew impatient with 32x CD-R burning and figured that having two optical drives would be beneficial even if the NEC 3500A did become better after firmware updates.
Go for the 3500A, but keep in mind that no current optical drive has absolutely everything.
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