Positive:

• Fast USB external drive fully supporting 18x write speed.
• Excellent CD-R writing quality and compatibility.
• Excellent/very good DVD±R/RW writing quality and compatibility.
• Good DVD±R DL writing quality and media compatibility.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL at 16x/8x
• Supports DVD-RAM read/write at 12x speed.
• Supports LightScribe direct disc labelling system.
• Supports BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/RW/DL.
• Supports Disc Quality Scanning with KProbe and CD-Speed.
• Good software bundle.
• Supports Mount Rainier.
• Can read/write MINI DVD
• Lead free product.

Negative:

• CD-RW writing quality needs improving.
• Can only read DVD±R media at 12x.
• Can only read DVD±RW media at 8x.
• Single LED for read/write.

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points:

The Samsung SE-S184M is the fastest external drive we have tested here on CD Freaks. Being a so called multi-drive, the SE-S184M supports all of the currently popular CD/DVD formats including DVD-RAM.

The Samsung SE-S184M was able to burn all our tested CD-R media with exceptional quality and media compatibility was also very good.

DVD±R/RW writing quality was also of a very high standard, the Samsung SE-S184M coping with some difficult to handle media very well. The SE-S184M was also able to burn selected DVD±R media at faster than its rated speed, and overall burning performance with DVD±R media was very good indeed. Recording some of the fastest write times we have seen.

The Samsung SE-S184M also proved to be a good performer with DVD-RAM media, again recording some very fast write times with our tested 12x DVD-RAM media.

The Samsung SE-S184M also proved to perform well with the LightScribe direct disc labelling system, with our LightScribe test discs images looking very good indeed.

We were very impressed with the enclosure used with the Samsung SE-S184M. Not only does the enclosure look good, the performance for a USB drive was staggering, with the Samsung SE-S184M easily reaching its maximum quoted 18x write speed with DVD±R media.

The supplied software suite is also good, with a nice balance of ease of use and enough features to satisfy the end user.

The main negative points:

There are not many negative things to say about the Samsung SE-S184M. CD-RW write quality needs improving; the burn quality of our tested CD-RW Ultra speed media was poor.

We would also like to see faster DVD±R/RW reading speeds. 12x/8x reading speeds are quite slow by today’s standards.

We would also like to see different coloured LED’s being used for read/write.

To sum up, this is what we would say: “The Samsung SE-S184M is fast, has a good feature set and burns media with good quality”

By using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber we were unable to find a price listing for the drive. However we found the drive at getprice listed at 62.07 €. (December 2006).

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Introduction