Labs

The silver Sony looks great. It's also a little shorter than some of the other drives, which could make it easier to install in smaller or more cramped PCs. It's also the cheapest drive on test. However, it has several significant shortcomings.

Firstly, it only writes DVD-Rs at a top speed of 4x - half that of most other drives here. And it writes DVD-RWs at a pedestrian 2x, leaving you waiting up to half an hour for your disc. Another thing to bear in mind is that it's an OEM drive. Not only does it come with no software, no cables are supplied either.

If silver matches your PC's colour scheme, and you only want to write DVD+R discs, the Sony is still a capable drive.

In our tests, it averaged a speed of 6.2x for DVD+R discs - not all that slower than the NEC. But then, the NEC offers DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+R9 writing. Unfortunately, up against such stiff competition for only £1 more, you'd be nuts not to go for that drive instead.