Review: Liteon SSM-85H5SX optical drive

Liteon has been making Lightscribe DVD writers for two years now and the slimline SSM-85H5SX is one of its smallest yet.

It plugs into a spare USB port and Nero 7 Essentials is supplied so it can conveniently make copies of DVDs and CDs.

The accompanying power adapter can also be attached, however in testing we found it writes and reads discs just drawing power from a USB connection. This makes it incredibly portable since there's no need to carry around the extra bulk.

The drive's Lightscribe functionality lets it can etch images onto the top side of special DVDs and CDs.

Blank Lightscribe DVDs cost around 40p a piece, which is more expensive than standard discs, but considerably cheaper than Lightscribe's rival technology Labelflash. After a disc has been written to, it's flipped over and put back into the drive. A monochromatic image is then burnt to the top side of the disc.

Due to the discs' high cost, we think it will only be used for special occasions, for example making a nice looking wedding or holiday photo CD.

Nero contains a paint-like program to design covers using text, images and shapes. The end product is a very professional looking disc and it's a much more elegant solution than using a permanent marker or gluing on a paper label.

The Liteon SSM-85H5SX isn't as fast as internal computer DVD writers or bigger external drives, which can manage 20x DVD recording, but 8x is still a reasonable speed.

It takes around nine minutes to write to a DVD and all the DVD formats are supported, including less common DVD-Ram discs.

Other external drives can be bought for half the price, but they are twice the size. But for those on the move, the Liteon SSM-85H5SX is sensibly priced.