CDFreaks take a further look at the Samsung SE-W164L DVD burner. The SE-W164L supports 16x DVD+R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/-RW, and 8x/4x DVD+R DL/-R DL writing. So in case you have that large file that won't fit on a single layer DVD, you can still opt for a dual layer media with 8.5 gigabytes of capacity for the backup. But, what is also rather interesting, is this happens to be the first drive from Samsung supporting LightScribe direct disc labeling. With this system, you can burn your data, flip the disc, then burn a label right to the appropriate media using the drives laser.

The Samsung SE-W164L can write most DVD media with good quality and the writing performance on DVD+R is respectable with writing times starting around 5 minutes and 56 seconds and up. Given that the SE-W164L is an external drive, the performance is very good. The Samsung SE-W164L sports an elegant enclosure, and can also be vertically mounted using the supplied stand. The CD-R write quality is excellent with the Samsung SE-W164L, with most tested CD-R media returning impressive results. Write performance was also impressive with many burns well under 3 minutes. The supplied software package was also good, and should provide the beginner and the more advanced user with all the necessary tools to write DVD and CD recordable media. Bitsetting support on DVD+R/+RW/+R DL is also a welcome inclusion and ensures good compatibility with set top DVD players. As a last point we would like to mention that this DVD burner is a "lead-free" product, which meet the recycling standards that came into effect on the 1st of January 2006.

There are few negative points about this drive, we would like to mention that other drives offer faster read speeds on CD-R/RW/DA and on DVD+R/RW/+R DL media. Further, it was a little disappointing not to find some media that could be burned at higher than its rated speed. We would also like to see a dual coloured LED, with one colour used for read and a different colour used for writing, instead of the present single coloured green LED.