Lite-On is known for making affordable quality optical drive products.  One one side, you can see their products in the home entertainment department where you can find consumer DVD players and recorders.  If you have a computer though, they manufacture CD and DVD burning optical drives.

Today, I will be reviewing Lite-On's latest external DVD and CD burning optical drive, the SHW-1673SU.  If you are familiar with Lite-On's model numbers, you might have noticed that this product contains the number '1673' in its name.  Perhaps this drive may have some relation to the internal SOHW-1673S drive?  I did a little research on the specifications of both products and they both have the exact same specifications in terms of reading and writing speeds for various formats.  Although this may just be an external version of the SOHW-1673S drive, what is more important is the interesting EZ-DUB feature this external drive has.  As the name implies it allows a user to quickly 'DUB' or copy discs or files with just a press of a button.  We'll explore this feature more further in this review.
 

The drive came in a box with a thematic blue typically seen with Lite-On internal drives.  The front of the box shows a picture of what the drive looks like with an external enclosure.  I like how the box lists the full read and writing speeds for all the different kinds of formats at the back of the box.  The potential buyer can easily look at the back and see if the read or write speeds meet their needs.

The majority of the enclosure of the drive is black.  White lettering is used to place accent on the labels in contrast with the overall black color.  The front of the drive is surrounded by a silver color bezel giving the drive a stylish, yet pleasing look.  Two special buttons are at the top of the drive which are used with the EZ-DUB function.  One is labeled as DUB, and the other FILE.  The DUB button is essentially used if you wish to backup or make a copy of a disc.  The FILE button is used if you want to backup specific files on your computer. 
 

The back of the drive keeps things simple with just two connections.  One is used to connect to your computer through USB 2.0.  The other plug is used to provide power to the drive.
 

As expected, all the necessary cables and items have been provided to allow you to set the drive up without the need of having to get anything else.  There is a power supply which is the typical size used in laptops.  In addition, there is USB 2.0 cable which is somewhat ample in length.  Lastly, the software PowerDVD 5 and Nero Express version 6 has been included with the package to allow you to use the drive to watch a DVD movie or be able to create and author your own discs.  Lite-On should really update the included PowerDVD software considering that version 6 has been out for a while already.
 

I used Nero InfoTool in order to find out more about about the internal features of the drive.  The drive has a 2MB internal buffer and supports most writing modes such as Disc-At-Once (DAO).  Since I'm using an older version of Nero, please disregard the reported read and write speed of 8X.  The drive is capable of reading and writing at 16X.
 

Next, I used Nero CD-DVD to gather some information about its performance.  I did the test on multiple blank DVD discs in order to determine its performance on writable media.  Keep in mind, that if this test was done on a "pressed" or retail DVD, then the read speeds would be much higher.
 

Just by pressing the "FILE" button on top of the drive, the following interface popped up.  In "FILE" mode, you drag and drop your files onto the large circle icon in order to allow the recorder to burn those files.  The EZ-DUB feature made it very simple to copy a bunch of files.

Then, I tried pressing the "DUB" button.  The DUB feature is used if you want to make a copy of an existing disc that you have.  Keep in mind that this feature was intended to be used for your personal files only.  If you try this on a copyrighted disc such as a music or movie CD or DVD, the drive will not make a copy correctly.
 

After inserting a DVD or CD to copy, the dialogue box will immediately start the copy process.  The burner will first write an image file of your disc to the hard drive.  Then it will prompt you to insert a blank disc in order to make the copy.
 

The EZ-DUB feature's usefulness will depend on the user.  Novice or beginner computer users will find it much easier in being able to backup their personal discs quickly and efficiently.  On the other hand, an expert computer user may not find as much use for the feature since they can accomplish the same task using the burning programs they are familiar with.  For them, the EZ-DUB feature is more of just convenience instead.  In the end, what matters the most is the performance and quality of the drive which this product has.  Let's not forget, because this is an external drive, it is also portable.  This drive can be used with a laptop and can be easily moved from computer to computer.

Reviewed by ronald@digitalreviews.net