Samsung SW-240 & SM-332 CDRW
Review by Navid Mortezaei on 05.27.2003

Conclusion:

After testing and working with these drives, we found that, for their price (SW-240 $50 & SM-332 $70), both drives work tremendously well. In addition to the drives' basic functionality, the user is getting many features, including buffer under-run protection, Mt. Rainer support, and four times the amount of buffer memory offered by comperable drives.

Both had great benchmarks results, but overall the SM-332 beat the SW-240 by a slight margin. Although the SW-240 has a higher write speed, and demonstrated slightly higher data read speeds and faster seek times, the SM-332 displayed lower CPU usage across the board, and noticably better audio extraction times. Based on this, I recommend the SM-332. For only $20 more than the SW-240, the SM-332 offers DVD playback and better performance, at the sacrifice of an additional 30 seconds or less for CD burns. And recently, the popularity of DVD media is increasing, so it is likely that soon every PC will need DVD support. But if you really need a separate drive just for burning, or your budget is really tight, the SW-240 is still a great product.

Due to its versatility, performance, and price, the Samsung SM-332 has been awarded the Techware Labs Recommended Product award.