Conclusion:

The Lite-On iHES208 8X Blu-ray Reader and DVD Writer Combo is a very silent and feature-packed all-in-one drive that takes a unique position in the market for being the only optical drive you really need.

There isn’t much of a demand for Blu-ray burning in the IT consumer space due to the fact that a 10-pack of BD-RE discs exceeds the price of buying a 64GB flash drive that also has faster start-up and transfer speeds. Nevertheless, the introduction of higher storage NAND flash solutions in the upcoming years will wage an interesting competition war against optical storage and its lasting effectiveness for holding audio, video, film and priceless sensitive data.

In the meantime, Lite-On’s latest solution holds a temporary time-gap responsibility by featuring support for the ability to read almost every optical format on the planet at very reasonable speeds. At the same time, it can play back Blu-ray High Definition content with incredible precision and silence, as the drive was quieter than every fan in our system during use. In the future, it is possible that the company will develop a 16X Blu-ray Reader with a larger buffer and a higher Burst Rate speed, but the need for anything more is quite unnecessary considering the future of flash-based media storage.

For the reasonable price of $109.99 from Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect and B&H Photo, the Lite-On iHES208 offers the best value on the price to performance scale over the other drives we tested and deserves to be noted for its achievement as an all-in-one optical drive solution for the majority of consumer usage scenarios. In Europe you will get ripped off as usual. For about €106,- you will get the black bulk version.