6 Combo-Drives (CD-RW + DVD-ROM) Roundup

by Andrey Kuznetcov
07/02/2003 | 01:13 AM

Our today’s review is written especially for those people who are into “combining”. Among optical drives available in the market, combo-ones look most appealing. We mean devices that combine the capabilities of CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives. The advantages are numerous. First, one five-inch bay of the chassis is left free. In some computer cases the number of these bays is limited to two or three. Or, sometimes, you cannot install a second 5”-device because it runs into the mainboard. Meanwhile, there is a lot of equipment ready to be mounted into this bay: optical drives, Live Drive modules and various I/O and informational panels.

Second, if you buy a CD-RW (CD-ROM) and a DVD-ROM separately, you will have to count out more monetary units than if you were purchasing one combo-drive. Today, the combo-drive costs about $70, while independently these two devices cost $60 (DVD-ROM) and $50 (CD-ROM). So, that’s a point to consider if you are going to buy a new computer. Of course, it would be even better to buy a super-combo that could burn DVD media too. But so far such devices are priced rather high and many users find them unaffordable. This situation may change in the future and such combos will surely become popular. But this is another story.

Our today’s story is about six drives that combine CD-RW and DVD-ROM functions.

CD-RW Plus DVD-ROM Drives Specifications

The basic specifications of CD-RW + DVD-ROM combo-drives look as follows:

LG GCC-4480B

The exterior of this model won’t make you chassis look any worse. Although the front panel is made of standard white plastic, the manufacturer tried to make its creation look unique. The tray of the drive has rounded corners and a small convexity in the center. The tray is decorated with the manufacturer’s logo and speed characteristics of the drive. Below the tray there is the eject button, the audio jack for the headset and volume control wheel. A single design theme goes through the entire device: rounded elongated shapes. Even the LED is made in this fashion. The back of the drive is quite standard, though: interface and power supply connectors, digital and analog audio outputs, and the jumper pins block for drive configuring. On the upper lid of the drive case you can see a circle covering the spindle and a few imprints to make the device more robust.

This model boasts pretty attractive specs. The manufacturer claims 16x DVD read speed and 48x CD burn speed. Re-writing is performed at 24x. Access time equals 120ms for DVDs and 110ms for CDs. It features 2MB buffer and supports ATA/33 interface.

The model supports SuperLink technology that provides buffer underrun protection.

The OEM version of the drive comes without any accessories.

LG GCC-4320B

One more cutie from LG. It looks like a “lighter” version of the previous model considering its slightly lower speed parameters. The difference in their designs is minimal. There are two LEDs under the tray in this model and the plastic of the face panel is gray rather than white. The tray itself is darker than the front panel. All other things are identical. The same logo and drive speed label. The tray can be loaded and unloaded with a round Eject button. For playing audio CDs, there is a headphones jack in the front panel and the volume regulator wheel. The backside of the drive follows the standard: power supply and interface connectors, an analog and digital outputs, and the jumper pins block.

As we have said above, this model is less speedy than its elder brother, although DVD read speed is identical: 16x. The maximum CD burn speed of LG GCC-4320B is 32x; CD rewrite speed is 10x. The access time equals that of the other model: 110ms for CDs and 120ms for DVDs. This drive also supports SuperLink technology, ATA/33 interface and features 2MB buffer.

We received an OEM version of the drive for our tests, so the package contained no accessories.

Philips PBC03210G

The design of this model is rather unassuming. The only details that somehow liven up its appearance are the Company name written in blue letters and a strange cabbalistic symbol representing something like a coiled snake. If you are not among the initiated, let’s clarify: this logo implies that the drive has been certified for Mount Rainier technology. The front panel has nothing else besides the eject button. The back panel carries the standard set of items: interface, power, digital and analog audio connectors and the pins set with a jumper.

This model is no record-breaker reading DVD-ROM at 12x and CDs at 40x, writing CDs at 32x and rewriting them at 10x. The average access time is 125ms. It supports ATA/33 interface and features 2MB buffer.

Like the other two drives, this one also arrived in an OEM package with no additional accessories.

Samsung SM-348B

The design of this drive looks most original of all: the tray is rounded at the corners and carries no logos. A decorative line follows its contour. The purple eject button and the LED are pressed into the front panel. There is an audio jack and a volume control wheel below the tray. The front panel carries a few logos suggesting that you deal with a combo-drive. The grooves in the upper cover help to make the drive case more robust. The ordinary set of connectors is located at the backside; the only nuance is the white color of the plastic panel instead of the traditional black.

This drive boasts the highest claimed speeds of all we are going to review today. It can read DVDs at 16x and CDs at 52x, write CDs at 52x and rewrite them at 24x. Average access time is the same for both DVD and CD access: 110ms. This model has a 2MB buffer, like the other participating drives, but its retail version comes with 8MB of buffer memory. This combo supports Mount Rainier and DVA (Dynamic Vibration Absorber) technologies. The latter is intended to reduce vibrations and, accordingly, the level of acoustic noise. Besides, the drive supports buffer underrun protection technology.

No accessories come with the OEM version of the drive.

Toshiba SD-R1202

This model has nothing exceptional about itself. It looks pretty standard, just like many other common models. The white plastic panel is plain, without any logos or stickers on it. There is no audio jack on the front panel, only the eject button. That is why the potential customers will understand immediately, that this is not the best choice for music fans. The case is pretty robust due to a few grooves on the upper part of the case. As for the back panel, we have the power and interface connectors, analog and digital audio outputs, and the pin set with a jumper. We might add, however, that there are no standard descriptions for these pins and connectors on the drive. It is not on the plastic panel and not on the metal casing.

This Toshiba drive is no fast runner: 12x DVDs, 40x CDs, 16x write and 10x rewrite speeds are claimed in the specs. Average access time is 130ms for DVDs and 110ms for CD-ROM. The drive supports ATA/33 interface and features 2MB buffer. The OEM version comes without any accessories, except a service instruction leaflet.

Note: all SD-R1202 owners should make sure that they have a new firmware version. The older version produced certain problems when burning CDs. Toshiba’s Website recommends you to download a small utility to check the firmware version of your drive. If it says you have the faulty firmware, you should use the HP1026 update. Fortunately, this firmware was already present in our drive so we had no problem with it.

Toshiba SD-R1312

The design of this model is very similar to that of the above described Toshiba drive. There is only one difference: the front panel has an audio jack for headset and a volume control wheel. Besides, the upper lid of the drive case has no grooves or any other relief: it is absolutely flat. The back side of the drive is absolutely the same, too: the connectors have no marking still.

SD-R1312 is faster than the previous model in one characteristic only: burn speed is 32x. The other parameters are the same: 12x DVD read, 40x CD read, 32x CD-R burn and 10x CD-RW burn. Average access time equals 130ms for DVDs and 110ms for CDs. The drive also supports ATA/33 interface and features a 2MB buffer.

The same service instructions leaflet comes with the OEM version of the drive.

Testbed and Methods

In order to get a more or less objective picture of how fast our CD-RW/DVD-ROM drives are, we were running two kinds of software during our tests. First we used special utilities that helped to get a lot of technical info about the drives. This is very important as it is sometimes hard or simply impossible to receive this information from the manufacturer. We also compared this info with the claimed specifications. Sometimes they differ, you know. So, here is the list of our info utilities:

• Nero Info Tool version 1.03.2;
• CDIdentifier 1.0.0.3;
• EAC version 0.9 Beta 4 (Configuration Wizard);
• HWINFO32 version 1.30.

The other group of programs consisted of various benchmarks sets:

• CD WinBench 99 version 1.1.1;
• Nero CD Speed version 1.02e;
• Nero CD DAE version 0.4 Beta;
• Nero InCD 3.5.2.40;
• CDRom Drive Analyzer version 2.32;
• CDVD Benchmark 1.2;
• Sandra Standard 2003 3.9.44.

All the drives we tested were attached to the second IDE channel as Master and were working in the UDMA mode.

Our testbed was configured as follows:

• Athlon 700MHz CPU;
• Elitegroup K7S5A mainboard;
• 128MB SDRAM;
• ATI Radeon 8500 64MB;
• IBM DTLA 307015 15GB UDMA/5 HDD;
• Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and DirectX 9.0 installed.

We didn’t tweak the drives in any way and tested them “As Is”, just as they came into our test lab.

If you don’t see some results or diagrams for certain drives, it means that the drive didn’t pass the test completely or partially.

Informational Utilities

LG GCC-4480B

The hardware capabilities of LG GCC-4480B read with the help of special programs do not quite correspond to what the manufacturer claimed in the specs sheet. According to the applied utilities, this model supports today’s most acute technologies, such as Mount Rainier, and can work with C2 markers. While the second thing is pretty clear, the Mount Rainier support is not mentioned on the manufacturer’s site and in the corresponding PDF-file. Is it manufacturer’s modesty, lack of official certification, unavailability in the first firmware version, or what? We will see whether Nero Info Tool is right in the benchmarking part of our roundup.

As for other characteristics, the karaoke fans may be upset to find out that this combo-drive doesn’t support CD+G disks. The drive has regional protection without any particular zone specified.

LG GCC-4320B

The second drive from LG differs from the first one by the lack of Mount Rainier support. Well, it is not mentioned by the manufacturer, so it is not included. The drive is also regionally protected without any zones specified.

Philips PBC03210G

The info utility couldn’t find the ability of Philips drive to read DVD-RAM and CD-Text discs. It can’t work with C2-markers too, can it? But it has official Mount Rainier support. The drive is regionally protected without any particular zones specified.

Samsung SM-348B

According to the informational utilities, the combo-drive from Samsung features everything a device of this class can ever support. Although the manufacturer claimed Mount Rainier support too, Nero Info Tool didn’t find it. The model is also regionally protected without any specific zones listed.

Toshiba SD-R1202

The informational utilities applied showed that the only weak point of this model is the absence of DVD-RAM and Mount Rainier support. The drive is designed according to the frequently used RPC II scheme. No zone is specified.

Toshiba SD-R1312

The second Toshiba combo-drive can read DVD-RAM, unlike the previously discussed model. All other displayed characteristics are identical. The drive is regionally protected with no specific zones mentioned.

Performance in CD Winbench 99

	CD-ROM	CD-R	CD-RW
LG GCC-4480B	Graph	Graph	Graph
LG GCC-4320B	Graph	Graph	Graph
Philips PBC03210G	Graph	Graph	Graph
Samsung SM-348B	Graph	Graph	Graph
Toshiba SD-R1202	Graph	Graph	Graph
Toshiba SD-R1312	Graph	Graph	Graph

This is our good old CD Winbench 99. Traditionally, we used a printed CD and its copies on CD-R and CD-RW media.

The shape of the internal transfer graphs for all models indicates that all drives except Philips PBC03210G had problems with reading the printed CD. There are slumps at the end indicating that the drives couldn’t read up the data written in this zone and had to slow their speed down. Nevertheless, it was LG GCC04480B that scored the highest result in Winmark. However, the slowest result also belonged to an LG product, though to a different one.

LG GCC-4480B was again the fastest at reading the CD-R disk. Very close to it we can see LG GCC-4320B and Toshiba SD-R1312. In fact all drives performed more or less evenly in this test, only Samsung SM-348B was notably slower. Anyway, this drive scored a rather high Winmark rating, too.

The CD-RW disk proved to be a tough one for both models from Toshiba. They read the data noticeably slower than other drives. LG GCC-4320B fell behind, too, but not too much. And again it is LG GCC-4480B that grabbed the highest Winmark rating. Samsung SM-348B is the second, notching the maximum read speed on this medium along the way. LG GCC-4320B takes the third place.

As for the access time, LG GCC-4480B was the best track-finder on any type of media. We could put the other LG, GCC-4320B, on the second place considering its overall results. The slowest of all was Toshiba SD-R1202.

I believe, it is not quite correct to name a winner in terms of CPU resources utilization. Four drives showed identical results of a little over 1%. As for the losers, they were both Toshiba drives: 7%+ CPU workload may become inappropriate in some situations.

Summing up the CD Winmark 99 results, we would like to single out the LG GCC-4480B combo. It performed very well in all tests.

We would also like to make a remark about the Samsung drive. When attached to the farther connector on the IDE cable, it started aborting Winbench tests issuing various error messages from the very beginning. At first, it seemed like it was flawed and couldn’t work stably at all. But one of the messages about CRC errors made us suspicious. And we were right: after attaching the drive to the medium IDE-connector on the cable, we had no problems with the drive any more. So, it looks like the drive didn’t have enough signal power in the cable to work properly. It is obviously a flaw of this given model as all other tested drives were quite comfortable being attached to the farther connector of the cable and the cable itself was standard, no more than 18 inches long. So, if you are going to purchase this drive, pay attention to this problem: if errors appear, try connecting it to another connector of your IDE cable. It should help.

Performance in Nero CD Speed

Basic Tests (Graphs)

We used this benchmark package to run most of the tests. First, we ran a bunch of basic tests on four types of media. They were: a printed CD (enclosed with a computer magazine), CD-R and CD-RW disks with data created by the program itself, and a licensed audio CD.

Basic Tests (Diagrams)

First come the tests with the CD-ROM disk:

Now check the results for the CD-R disk:

The next set of diagrams corresponds to tests with the CD-RW disk:

The last 6 diagrams demonstrate the work of our testing participants with the CD-DA disk:

The LG GCC-4480B drive was the most stable at reading various types of media. The difference in its average speeds was very small, and the results exceeded 30x. Samsung SM-348B was the fastest on three media types, but the general impression was somewhat spoiled when it came to the audio CD. The same is true for Philips PBC03210G, while both Toshiba drives suffered a significant performance drop in case of CD-RW and CD-DA disks. LG GCC-4320B also trips over the CD-RW disk.

LG GCC-4480B boasts the lowest seek time. Formally, Philips PBC03210G is the winner, but it showed quite indecent numbers of a few milliseconds. We would consider it some error in the benchmark. Toshiba drives are the losers here and perform even worse when reading the audio CD.

In the CPU utilization test, the results of Philips PBC03210G look very strange: they float up and down without any order. In some cases, the 1x speed produces a higher workload onto the CPU than higher speeds. Toshiba drives are also hungry for CPU resources. The benchmark suggests that Toshiba SD-R1202 is the record-holder in this respect: it loads the CPU to the full 100% on the CD-R disk. Samsung SM-348B also behaves strange when working with the audio CD: it doesn’t consume too many CPU resources from the start, but then gets hungrier and hungrier.

You can look up other results in the table: they are more unified, except the interface data transfer rate. But this parameter is often measured wrong by the program.

Quality Check

We carried out a special “quality” test in order to check how well the tested combo-drives can read the disks with physically damaged or scratched surface. For this test we used a printed CD-disk with scratched surface. Notwithstanding the scratches, LG GCC-4320B drive read it all up, although at an average speed. We would also like to point out two more models: Samsung SM-348B, which showed the minimum amount of errors, and Toshiba SD-R1312, which performed this test with the biggest number of errors.

Overburning Test

This benchmark checks if the drive can write more info onto the media than their official capacity allows. We ran this test for three CD-R disks with the official storage capacity of 700MB. They were: Memorex (8x nominal write speed), TDK d-view 48x and Fujitsu 48x.

As you see from the table, Samsung SM-348B and LG GCC-4320B have the highest “overburning” potential of all. These drives could reach the maximum of 99:57.74 on two disks. Other drives showed pretty average, standard results: they all can burn extra 2-3 minutes, not more.

Advanced DAE Quality Test

This detailed test checks the drive’s ability to extract successfully soundtracks from audio disks. The test worked with a CD-R disk specially created by CD Speed for this purpose. All models, except Toshiba SD-R1202, hit the 100% mark. The South Korean drives were the fastest and most accurate: their offset parameter was minimal. It was very interesting, but the fastest drives turned to be less efficient for on-the-fly copying. Most drives were not able to read up Lead-in and Lead-out data, but could read CD Text and Subchannel data.

The only exception, Philips PBC03210G, could read Lead-in, but failed to do the trick with CD Text. There is no evident favorite in this test, although the South Korean trio looks preferable.

Nero CD DAE

The program for ripping audio tracks and converting them to WAV-files only had problems with the Toshiba drives. SD-R1202 made a lot of mistakes. SD-R1312 failed only five times – it is not too bad, but other drives didn’t fail at all.

Performance in CDRom Drive Analyzer

The CDRom Drive Analyzer utility was run on three types of media: a printed CD (enclosed with a computer magazine), CD-R and CD-RW disks with the data created by Nero CD Speed.

The graphs don’t require too many comments of ours. Still, there are a few moments to be discussed. LG GCC-4320B gave out a speed boost on the CD-R and even got beyond the nominal limit of 40x. Philips PBC03210G looks good, too: 52x and 44x on “full-size” CD-R and CD-RW disks, respectively, although its official limit is 40x. Samsung SM-348B works equally well with both CD-R and CD-RW. Toshiba SD-R1202 somehow slumps just starting to read the CD-R disk, but eventually shows higher maximum speed than specified (also on the printed CD that carries less than 700MB of data). On the other hand, it flunks the test on the CD-RW showing only 25x speed. The other Toshiba drive behaves similarly: faster than promised on the CD-ROM and CD-R, but slower on the CD-RW.

Performance in CDVD Benchmark

The CD Benchmark program from German developers is multi-functional and, unlike other utilities, supports nearly all types of media available, including DVD disks. Of course, we used it in our tests. We took the four disks we used in Nero CD Speed (basic) tests, a licensed DVD disk and its copy made on a DVD-RW TDK 4.7GB.

Each screenshot has two windows. The left window displays a yellow (white) line indicating the read speed and a green line standing for the spindle rotation speed. The right window displays the access time diagram: yellow dots stand for random access, while red dots indicate full stroke access. Below are the numerical results of the graphics representation, all in German of course, but you will have no problem understanding what the whole thing is about. For each drive you can see the read speeds (average, in the beginning and in the end) given in “X” and in KB/s. Besides, they also mention the working speed range of the given drive, the CPU utilization, access times, burst data transfer rate. When audio CDs are tested, there is also some info about the drive’s ability to use “Accurate Stream” and “C2 error” pointers.

You can see all results in the diagrams, so we will only dwell upon the drives work with DVD media.

LG GCC-4480B drive slows down its read speed by 25% on transition from DVD-ROM to DVD-RW. The same happens to the other LG model – GCC-4320B. Philips PBC03210G is reading both DVDs at about 4x speed. Samsung SM-348B is brisk on the first half of the race and shows 11.5x on the DVD-ROM, but then the speed goes down and the drive ends much poorer. When reading DVD-RW, the speed doesn’t go beyond 6x, but the drive maintains it throughout the disk.

Toshiba SD-R1202 reads the audio disk with the stable linear speed of a little below 16x. It also produces a jagged transfer line for the CD-R and low read speed for the CD-RW. It stands to the claimed specs on the DVD-ROM, reading it at 12x. On the DVD-RW, however, this speed goes halfway down and the transfer line has a lot of peaks and slumps. The other Toshiba, SD-R1312, behaved very similarly. It had no evident slumps in the graphs, but its DVD-ROM reading speed was just a little above 8x and dropped 1.5 times down on the DVD-RW.

Performance in Nero DVD Speed

First we will consider the results of the tests with a DVD-ROM disk:

These are the results of the DVD-RW tests:

The special utility for checking the performance of our drives when working with DVD-media ran with the same disks, as those we used in the previous test: a licensed movie DVD and its copy on a DVD-RW disk.

So, what do we have here? The LG GCC-4480B couldn’t make it to its specified speed. With both media it managed to show the read speed slightly exceeding 6x. Moreover, we see a pretty big slump in the end of the graph for the printed disk.

The second LG drive, GCC-4320B, looks a little better. It copes perfectly well with the printed DVD and demonstrates a much higher read speed. But as it comes to DVD-RW disk, the read speed drops by the same 25% as that of the predecessor.

Philips PBC03210G shows about 4x read speed, which is less than could be expected. Moreover, it failed to read the DVD-RW disk to the end.

Samsung SM-348B nearly hit its specified speed, reading the DVD-ROM at more than 14x. The problems on the last section didn’t allow it to reach 16x: there are evident slumps in the graph. The DVD-RW didn’t tolerate such agility: the read speed was twice as low as that shown on the printed disk.

Toshiba SD-R1202 had every chance to reach the specified 12x on the DVD-ROM, but again the last stretch proved to be hard to pass. DVD-RW reading is not a strong point of this model: it managed to demonstrate no more than 5x.

Toshiba SD-R1312 behaves very similarly to the first Toshiba when reading the DVD-RW disk. With DVD-ROM disk it proves more stable (no slumps in the graph). However, its average read speed doesn’t exceed 8x.

Taking into account the seek time, we could say that the best performance here belongs to LG GCC-4480B and Samsung SM-348B, which are the fastest so far. Philips PBC03210G proved the slowest, judging by the only test it passed.

Traditionally, the two Toshiba drives loaded the CPU most of all. But every rule has exceptions. This way, LG GCC-4480B utilized about 17% of the CPU resources in one of the tests under maximum workload, which is rather high.

Among other results, we could point out at the noticeably higher recognition time of the DVD-RW, although Philips PBC03210G is not quick to recognize the DVD-ROM, either.

Performance in SiSoft Sandra Standard

The performance rating was measured on three types of media: a printed CD disk, a DVD-ROM disk and a DVD-RW disk. We used them all in the previous tests.

LG GCC-4480B and Samsung SM-348B worked with the CD-ROM disk the fastest of all. They prove their claimed high speeds leaving other combo-drives behind. While Philips PBC03210G appeared the slowest.

Samsung SM-348B is the best reading the DVD-ROM disks. Toshiba SD-R1202 takes the second place. Three other drives perform equally fast, while Philips PBC03210G is again noticeably slower than other testing participants..

The two combos from LG and the Samsung work best of all with the DVD-RW media. Toshiba SD-R1202 turned to be the worst here: it even “outperformed” the drive from Philips.

Performance in Nero InCD

We checked the ability of the drives to work in the packet mode:

The work with CD-RW in packet mode implied that we measured the time necessary to format a CD-RW disk, and checked how quickly the drive could write/read data on/from this disk. Samsung SM-348B and LG GCC-4480B were working with Verbatim DataLifePlus 24x disks with 650MB storage capacity. Other models were tested with 700MB Digitex 12x CD-RW disks. The read and write speeds shown in the table were calculated by dividing the amount of data by the time spent on these operations, because the disks used were of different storage capacity.

As we see, it takes LG GCC-4480B and Philips PBC03210G less time to format the disk than it takes other drives. As we have already said above, the LG drive has no official Mount Rainier support, but feels quite confident working with the CD-MRW format. For other models, which managed to pass this test, this parameter is much higher. It took Samsung SM-348B surprisingly too much time to format the disk, while the drives using the UDF format showed expectedly high formatting times. On the other hand, the Samsung drive was the fastest at reading and writing, having proven the speeds claimed in the official specs. It even outpaced another drive with the same 24x rewrite speed.

Philips PBC03210G was the slowest drive in the packet mode.

Performance in Nero Burning Rom

We burned a few CDs with the help of the Nero Burning Rom utility:

We used this popular program to measure how much time each combo-drive needs to write an MPEG-4 movie (632MB) to Verbatim 24x and Digitex 12x disks.

The results could be analyzed according to the write speed ranges of the testing participants. LG GCC-4480B was faster than the other 24x drive – Samsung SM-348B. Among 10x drives, the Toshibas were faster.

Conclusion

This is the hardest part of the roundup. We will try to sum up the results produced by the testing utilities and try to derive certain statements concerning the appeal of each drive for the free 5” bay in our computers.

LG GCC-4480B

Highs:

• Pretty design;
• Headphones jack in the front panel;
• High read speed with various types of disk media;
• High performance in the packet mode (Mount Rainier?);
• High audio track extraction speed and high positioning accuracy.

Lows:

• Not very high actual DVD read speed and a noticeable read speed reduction on DVD-RW disks;
• Doesn’t read physically damaged disks well;
• No official Mount Rainier support.

LG GCC-4320B

Highs:

• Nice design;
• Headphones jack in the front panel;
• Two LEDs indicating the drive status and work mode;
• Capable of writing significantly more data than the disks can actually take (overburning);
• Capable of reading physically damaged disks successfully;
• High audio track extraction speed and high positioning accuracy.

Lows:

• Certain read speed reduction on CD-RW disks;
• Not very high actual DVD read speed and a noticeable read speed reduction on DVD-RW disks.

Philips PBC03210G

Highs:

• Mount Rainier technology support;
• Fast disks formatting in the packet mode.

Lows:

• No headphones jack in the front panel;
• Low CD-RW read and write speeds in the packet mode (Mount Rainier);
• Low positioning accuracy when extracting audio tracks;
• Subjectively, this is the noisiest and warmest model of all;
• Not very high actual DVD disks read speed;
• Not very stable when reading physically damaged disk media.

Samsung SM-348B

Highs:

• Original design;
• Headphones jack;
• High audio track extraction speed and high positioning accuracy;
• High read speed across all types of disk media (somewhat lower on CD-DA);
• The fastest drive of all reviewed in terms of actual DVD-ROM read speed;
• Good reading of disks with damaged surface;
• Mount Rainier technology support;
• High CD-RW read and write speeds in the packet mode (Mount Rainier);
• Can write more data than the disks are supposed to take (overburning).

Lows:

• Reduced read speed with DVD-RW disk media;
• Possible stability issues when the drive is attached to the farther connector of the IDE cable.

Toshiba SD-R1202

Highs:

• No advantages worth mentioning.

Lows:

• Unassuming design;
• No headphones jack;
• Doesn’t suit for extracting audio tracks;
• Poor at reading damaged disks;
• Low read speed of CD-RW and CD-DA disks;
• Takes much time to format media to the UDF standard;
• High CPU utilization when working with any types of media;
• Low read speed on DVD-RW disks.

Toshiba SD-R1312

Highs:

• No evident advantages worth mentioning.

Lows:

• Unassuming design;
• No headphones jack;
• Doesn’t suit for extracting audio tracks;
• Poor at reading damaged disks;
• Low read speed of CD-RW and CD-DA disks;
• Takes much time to format media to the UDF standard;
• High CPU utilization when working with any types of media;
• Not very high actual DVD read speed and a noticeable read speed reduction on DVD-RW disks.

So, as you have probably understood, Samsung SM-348B wins this competition and can be considered the best choice among the 6 reviewed combo-drives.