The Toshiba SD-R1102 is far from the speediest drive I've ever tested. However, there are not many other drives that can read as many CD and DVD formats as this one and can write too. Even though the specs might not impress some of you fixated on pure speed, the drive did quite well. While its reading speed is only rated at 32x, it consistently exceeded this speed for CD-R and pressed media and actually scored better than a lot of 40x readers in CD Winbench. And while the drive could not write CD-Text or overburn, it still had no problems completing our writing and rewriting tests.

While the drive's speed might not impress you in the day and age of 20x and 24x writers, the rest of the kit should. It includes some of the best DVD decoding software available and some of the most robust and feature packed writing software that I've seen. Consumers should also be happy that the kit includes everything you'll need to get up and running. You'd expect all these features to come with a large price tag. Unlike the earlier combo drives, this one is quite affordable. It can easily be picked up for around $140 on Pricewatch