Hi, after reading many reviews of both drives, I am a bit tired and confused by the reviews. Does anyone have both drives? or can recommend which one to get?

The price difference between these 2 drives are only $6 AUD ($63 AUD vs. $69 AUD) which makes it very hard to choose, I rather to choose a quality drive, with great burn quality than a drive with feature....


It seems Lite-On 1693s is a newer drive that just came out, and seems to have no major problem, while Benq 1640 is an older drive but seems to burn things FASTER (in one review) BUT have problem with DVD-R DL (failed burns, fail read), can anyone verify that? or has the problem been fixed?


So which one should I buy? Thanks for all your answers in advanced, your help is greatly appreciated !

I wrote here about the Lite-On 1693s and my experience. Would be nice to hear anything like this about the Benq drive. Too me DL was not that important since the media is a bit expensive. But so far I use only Benq media for my drive. This seems to be the best for me, after Philips, Princo, t&t, and endless more...Philips the worst. At least my old Thinkpad 770 drive can read the Benq media without any problems - and only Benq. At least the media quality at Benq is great. So let us know...

I have used both drives, I think the Benq 1640 is the better writer. But you shouldn't be unhappy with either drive. I ended up selling the liteon when I got the Benq because my Pioneer 109 remains the best ripper of sctratched discs I've owned.

I primarly use dash media. Ritek, Maxmax and some Verbatim. The only DL media I've used is Verbatim plus so I can't comment on the DL-R problem.