Prices always come down for those patient enough to wait for new technology. Well, you've waited long enough for a Dual Layer DVD-recordable drive. Dynex's 16X DX-DVDRW16 DVD+/-RW drive performs well and sells for around $65, leaving no excuse not to upgrade your system's optical drive to the latest technology.

This drive burns DVD+R Dual Layer media at 4X speeds. There are faster drives out there, but the Dynex drive still manages to burn a full DL disc in less than 30 minutes. That may seem like quite a long time compared to normal DVD-recordable burns, but DL media can hold up to 8.5GB of data (up to 4 hours of video) on a single disc, making them perfect for those extra-long home movies or monster backups.

In addition to the ability to burn to DL media, the drive features high-end DVD+/-RW speeds. Both DVD-R and DVD+R burns are handled at 16X, letting you burn a full DVD in either format in around 5 to 6 minutes. DVD-RW writes are handled at 4X and DVD+RW writes at 8X for swift rewriteable backups.

The Dynex drive is a respectable CD-RW drive as well, with 48X/32X/48X speeds with CD media. Ahead Software's excellent Nero suite of applications for burning to both DVD and CD is included in the package.

Installing the drive proved the same as with any other optical drive. After powering down our system, we removed our old drive and replaced it with the internal Dynex drive. After a reboot, Windows recognized the new drive and we were ready to burn.

The drive features a flat black front, which nicely matched the color scheme of our tower. If you have a beige or white tower or desktop chassis, Dynex includes an additional white faceplate that you can swap out with the black one. Apart from an eject button and an LED that flashes amber while writing to a disc, there isn't much else on the front of the drive. You won't be able to listen to music directly through the drive via an audio jack, for example.

Dynex includes a decent manual with the drive that walks you through installation and operation. With nice all-around speeds and an excellent price, the Dynex DX-DVDRW16 DVD+/-RW Dual Layer drive makes it affordable to add DVD-recording to your system.

Pros: Great price, works well.
Cons: No bundled blank media.