Take the ultimate DVD drive and remove one feature. Now up the speed. Now drop the price.

Always the enthusiasts favourite optical drive, Lite-On delivers as expected with its new range.

Much more efficient at reading CDs than writing them, Optorite took second place in our read tests, pipped by the Imation by a mere three seconds.

Like Samsung, Aopen’s trump card is their ridiculously low price; a CD writer at $49 is pretty hard to beat.

Like the ASUS CRW5232AS, the Imation drive is slightly shorter than standard full length optical drives by approximately an inch, making it ideal for small form factor cases.

One of the plainer drives, it lacks a front audio adjustment dial or headphone socket, but does deliver on fast CD writing without too much damage to your wallet.