Positive:

•  Supports CD-R/RW writing at 52/32x
• Can write dedicated media at higher speeds than rated
• Supports Mount Rainier
• 2 Sheep burner (incl. SD 2.90)
• Excellent CD-R writing quality
• Good CD-RW writing quality
• Very fast and reliable reader
• Low price
• Supports disc quality testing

Negative:

• Only a single colour LED for writing and reading.
• Burns some CD-R and CD-RW media lower than at its rated speed.

Conclusion:

Let us now summarise the most important positive and negative points below:

The Main Positive Points:

The Lite-On SOHR-5239V is an excellent CD-R writer and manages it to burn almost every CD-R media with excellent quality and sometimes at higher speed than the media was rated. The CD-RW writing performance is not as good as the drives CD-R writing performance but also on such a high level that we can say it is good. Our tests have also shown that the Lite-On SOHR-5239V is a very fast and reliable reader it has read every disc without any problem.

The drive also supports the, nowadays hardly ever seen, Mount Rainier packed writing and in our sheep test the drive also performed extremely well and had no problems to pass the 2 sheep burner hurdle including the Safedisc 2.90 test.

The Main Negative Points:

There was not much we like to see improved. The main negative point we have found is that the drive supports writing some media at their maximum rated speed.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “The Lite-On SOHR-5239V is an excellent performing drive that includes some very nice features and it’s low price makes it to a very good choice for people who want a plain CD-R/RW burning device ”

By using our CD Freaks price grabber feature we found the retail Lite-On SOHR-5239V listed at $18.90 (February 2007) and at Geizhals.at we can find the drive starting at €18.89.   

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread.

Introduction