Introduction

Another external CD-RW drive? Yes, and it seems that external drives are becoming more popular judging from the influx of external drives delivered to our testing labs. Perhaps it is a sign of things to come in the CD-RW industry? Probably, since the next big leap for CD-RW vendors is to push out faster external CD-RW drives into a market that is already saturated with internal drives. Anyway, today's offering is one from TDK and we were already attracted to its form factor the moment we took it out of the box.

The TDK External USB 2.0 CD-RW is based on the 48x16x48x terminology, and like the Iomega External USB 2.0 CD-RW we reviewed recently, this TDK writer is basically an internal drive fitted into an external casing. But unlike many external CD-RW drives we have seen so far, the TDK External 48x16x48x is probably one of the best looking drive out in the market at the moment. In fact, it is hard to not believe that the designer of this drive is probably a PlayStation 2 fan - just check out the PS2-inspired grooves along the drive in the next page.