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What is the best 16x DVD drive ? (IDE) I was looking at a Toshiba and Pioneer.

I've got the Toshiba SD-M1502 16x48x DVD. Its tray load which don't bother me much but i've been real happy with it. Very fast drive and has a good DAE too. I think accessmicro.com has them on sale for around 60 bucks right now OEM but its all good and their shipping is reasonably priced. I've bought from them a couple of times and you usually get it really fast. I thought i'd edit this and say this Toshiba is also a very quiet drive. My old generic 52x cd-rom i had sounded like a jet taking off. I hardly even hear this. Matter of fact my Iomega 12x10x32 burner is louder than this Toshiba is...

On the other hand, I have the 16x Slot-Load from Pioneer and I love it The slot-load feature is sweet and I've noticed when I go to friends houses now, I try to push the CD into the trey It has good DAE (about 7minutes per CD--depending on how many tracks of course) I don't know what it's priced for, I bought mine from http://www.mwave.com though.

It probably all comes down to this: DO you want slot-load (pioneer) or trey load (toshiba)? IF you get trey-load, the advantage is, the faster CD-ROM speed.

Another vote for the Pioneer Slot load. I got mine just a little while ago for $70 from Googlegear.com. I have heard some say the 16x slot loads are loud but mine is quiter than the 50x CDROM it replaced.

I believe those 2, Toshiba and Pioneer do make the best DVD drives. Plus they have received the best reviews of the ones I've seen.

As the others have said it may depend on if you prefer slot load and maybe if there's a big price difference. I have a pioneer slot load in my main system and an affreey tray load in my other and frankly I like both. Slot load is quicker and more convenient and no tray to damage so because of that I'd say it's the best bet.

Hehe, blade made me think of something with the "no tray to be damaged" If you think of it that way, I would definetly go with the slot.

Heres what happened at a friends house. I was sitting there playing around on his computer for a while, and he was getting bored. So he started pushing me around and stuff, and we just kinda hit each other and stuff, you know normal guys clownin around. Well we got a little caried away and broke the little droor thing off that holds the mouse and keyboard, and it landed on the open cdrom tray, and broke that. lol luckily it only broke half of it, so it still works, just looks kinda funny.

Toshiba's are limited to 2x ripping speed for DVD's. The Pioneer does ~7x ripping. I think the Toshiba has faster audio ripping, and may be better quality (longevity) but not sure.

I've never ripped a DVD before. BUt on Audio i've hit well over 25x and for me thats about good enough.

Another here for Pioneer slot load. I have 3. One in each of my computers. 2 12x and 1 16x.

Does anyone actually use 16x forwarding? Hollywood's DVD software only does max of 8 but it's fast enough. PowerDVD 3.0 does 10 I think but it's slower than the Hollywood's 8x.

Just a funny note. One time a pressed the eject button on my Creative CD-Rom and the whole tray shot out and flew about a foot or two. Creative makes some crappy CD-roms. I highly doubt that would happen with Toshiba though.

LOL the whole tray? Thatis Great....sort of. I have had both the toshiba drives and pioneer my self. what I didnt like about the toshibas was the propritary audio cable. dont know if htey have changed this but it was annoying. I now have 4 pioneer slits 2 6x scsies and 216x ide's

Greg

My DVD-player fast forwards hella-fast! I don't know if it's cause the ATI DVD Player can actually take advantage of it's speed or not, but it zooms

I found a new Pioneer Slot load 16x for $67 shipped. It's on the way !

If you use Clone CD, get the Toshiba. I have one and love it.

nexus_7, the whole tray flew right out. I was like wtf !! Just picked it up and slid it back in.