As we stated at the beginning of this review, the LiteOn SLW 831S is not a drive one would use as a primary device. The 831S is targeted mainly at notebook users, who require a slim and compact unit, easy to carry around and one that covers basic needs such as backups. Hence, this drive offers low reading and writing speeds for both CD and DVD formats. Unfortunately, the drive is not only slow,.it's lacking a lot more than that.

As we saw in the foregoing pages of this review, the reading speed for both CD and DVD media is slow, especially in comparison to other external solutions, like the recently reviewed LG drive or even worse, internal drives. Its reading speed for CD media can reach as high as 24X for both CD Pressed and CD-RW media, while with DVD media, the max supported reading speed is 8X (DVD Pressed and DL). Unfortunately, the drive cannot read 90/99min audio discs, and its DVD ripping speed is not enough to render it a good ripping device (4X).

On the other hand, the error correction mechanism, is quite effective, and the drive reported some good results in our both CD and DVD error correction tests. With protected media, its performance was good, producing no errors when ripping protected audio discs.

When it comes to burning quality however, the drive has a lot of shortcomings. Unfortunately, the drive (even though the specifications mention 8X writing speed for both +R and -R media), did not managed to burn a single disc at that speed. Nero reported 8X available speed for some of the inserted media, but the time it took to burn the disc was more of a 4X. Times were typically around 14 minutes rather than the usual 8:00mins which is the average burn time for 8X media. One would then expect good writing quality at such low speeds. Alas, this is not the case, where 2 out of 3 inserted media either reported bad quality or did not make it through to the end of the quality tests, crashing out during the reading process. This goes for +R, -R, +RW, -RW and +DL media. CD burning quality was also affected by the drive's bad writing mechanism.

As far as features are concerned, LiteOn drive did not provide this drive with the full range of its well known and useful features. The drive could possibly be used as a quality checker (then again, how many end users really need that function), but it does not support the bitsetting function. It supports region free setting, but not overburning, for both CD and DVD media.

All in all, the drive is probably a very respectable reader, but not such a capable burner. We hope that LiteOn will look into and provide some solutions for a number of issues that cropped up during our testing procedures, especially with regards to burning quality. The drive can be found on the market at a price close to $126 including VAT.

- The Good

• Good CD - DVD error correction
• Supports protected Audio discs
• Can be set to Region Free
• Can be used for DVD media error measurements

- The Bad

• Doesn't accurately backup SafeDisc2 v2.9x+ protected discs
• Cannot read 90/99min audio discs
• Poor CD- DVD writing quality
• Doesn't support Bitsetting

- Like to be fixed

• Improved DL, DVD-RW writing quality with more media
• Improved CD writing quality

Retail Package
Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features