Toshiba RD-XS32

Pros: Nice feature set, easy to use and edit

Cons: Very slow write speed, sometimes hard to find disks that work with it, started to malfunction after 1 year

Summary: I've always tended to like Toshiba products, and this was no exception for the first year. During this time, I recorded tons of hours onto virtually any brand of blank DVD-RW media without any problems. Eventually, however, my DVR got 'Panasonicitis' - uncanny failure right after the warranty expired. It didn't fail completely, but it suddenly started requiring many attempts to successfully record a DVD or to even format a new blank DVD - of any brand. Cleaning the lens didn't seem to help much. Now I'm careful not to accumulate too much 'good stuff' on the hard disk because who know when or if total failure will occur.

My main complaint about it from the start has been its very slow write speed for DVD-RW - only 2x. It is often hard to find disks that are not 4x, which will not work on this unit. Also, often the DVDs I create will not play on other peoples' DVD players, even though they are supposed to play DVD-RW disks.

Otherwise, it has a lot of nice features and the user manual is a bit better written than those of many consumer electronics.