Comments on: Samsung TS-H552U Review

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:15:28 +0000

This writer frequently drops off the PC's radar, plus it will often not recognize certain perfectly good disks.

Buy it again?

Not in a fit.

By: Sath

Sath — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:46:50 +0000

Don't buy it Crap

1) Buffer underruns

2) Unusable DVDs

3) Real slow

4) Make computer crash

5) Wont eject (try 10 times and eject 1 time)

all these things that too within 1 year...

isnt this a good product??

I would give it a zero but 1 is the least option

By: Bert Bertjens

Bert Bertjens — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:57:58 +0000

Don't buy it ...

Crap ..sorry to say ...

TS-H552U writemaster USB external model .. nothing but trouble.. finally died after 2 months ...

By: S.Fraser

S.Fraser — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 03:03:10 +0000

Well there are many mixed reviews. This drive was in a specifically built system for multimedia production. Video editing the primary purpose.
NOW TDK media are brilliant and I have never had any problems using them until this drive. I have not had one successful write with the DVD+R or DVD-R 1-16x.
Using different burning programs I get cyclic recovery errors and mainly unreadable disks on DVD players. They may run on PC's but if I am producing movies for clients what's the use.

By: V Steele

V Steele — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 01:59:02 +0000

I find the only way to get DVDs to burn is to burn at 4x (2x causes errors) and even then I rarely get a disk that is error free. Also, on some commercial DVDs there is a problem called a “redundency” error which if you let the disk continue to try and read, for some reason, causes all normally well behaved DVD movies to gargle the sound. The only fix I’ve found to fix the gargle is to format C: and reinstall windows. I’m wondering if this is just a problem for Samsung, as we have a Samsung TV top DVD player that also won’t play the same commercial DVDs that the burner won’t. On the other hand, we have an AWA portable DVD player and a cheaper generic brand TV top DVD player and they play the same DVD’s fine! When I do manage to get a burned DVD movie working, my DVD players won’t recognise them unless I power them down and restart them with the disk in the player first. My brother burns DVD disks on his LG burner and they play on my DVD players fine!

By: No Problem

No Problem — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 02:19:13 +0000

I have burned aprox. 6 mp3 discs, and aprox. 10 DVD’s from file.(Pinnacle Software)No problems at all so far. I am still yet to write a dvd-r-dl. I always buy at least the medium grade discs.(Memorex or Sony)I never burn at the high speeds. Always at half of the highest speed. Out of all the discs that I have burned, including off of my older computer, (mabey 50 total) I have only had one that failed, and it was set to burn at the highest speed.
Try slowing down a bit and see if that helps. Also don’t buy cheap discs.

By: PM

PM — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:17:05 +0000

Installed ok, but will not read anything other than commercial disks, and even that is really spotty. Burning either DVDs or CDs so far = 0. Total waste of time and money. Bummer.
Samsung rocks in so many products, but this drive is abysmal.
I gave it a 2 because a client liked the “pretty beige colour”. WooHoo! And my cats haven’t peed on it. Yet.

By: kingjoffyj

kingjoffyj — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 10:07:34 +0000

Had this drive for around 2 weeks now and failed on 50 of 100 writes dvd-r x8 i’m putting it down to the disks at the moment so gonna try some new higher grade ones the disk i’ve been using are Ritek dvd-r printable x8

By: kccreator

kccreator — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:13:02 +0000

I bought the H552B and have had mixed success with it. It has burned my DVD+RW’s reliably (only 1 failed so far), as well as my CD-RW Verbatim’s and HP CD-RW’s. However all Sony CD-R 48x media has failed everytime. I have found that the discs are actually readable @ slower speeds if you can force them, but if not, then discs are basically useless. Does have very fast audio extraction rates. Reads CD-Rom’s great too.

Overall though, I am unsatisfied with it. Thinking about getting the BENQ drive which came out on top on ANAND’s site.

By: Mike S.

Mike S. — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:36:55 +0000

I’ve had this drive for quite a while now. I have only burned one “coaster” with it, and that was probably due to it being a very cheap generic blank that was probably defective. Write times are about what I expect them to be, read times from commercial DVDs and CDs are at the very least acceptable, and I haven’t found a blank disc yet that it won’t at least try to burn.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 20:01:40 +0000

I purchased this drive, and have tried to write 20 DVD’s on 4 or 5 different brands of media, (ZERO)0 successful burns. It did burn DVD+R better than the -R however not a single DVD that I could use to give to a client. I started looking for reviews on this unit and every review I have found has been terrible except the one on this site. Beware, don’t buy it! If you do, I can almost guarantee you won’t be happy,I know I’m not and the store where I bought it won’t take it back.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 03:53:55 +0000

It replaced my 4x sony single layer burner, so far 12 successfully burns at 16x! No DL burns yet…

By: Kmi

Kmi — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 07:28:36 +0000

Pour l’instant je suis content du graveur, je n’ai pas encore eu de problÃ¨mes avec… espÃ¨rons que Ã§a continue…

By: DEAN ATWOO

DEAN ATWOO — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:43:36 +0000

I BOUGHT A new GATEWAY PC WITH THE TS-H552 FROM BESTBUY AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS IT WOULD NOT BURN WITH OUT FREEZE UPS. BEST BUY WOULD NOT REPALCE IT SO I ORDERED A NEW ONE FROM NEWEGG FOR $53 AND IT IS AS BAD AS THE FIRST ONE iAM NOW LOOKING FOR A QUALITY DVDRW THAT WORS LIKE IT OUGHT TO

I WOULD NOT BUY ONE OF THESE AGAIN!

By: Yani

Yani — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 15:55:25 +0000

I purchased this drive after reading the review at Designtechnica and so far I am happy. I have not written aby bad discs and it has been very reliable. I checked out the review at cdrlabs after reading Teds comments and noticed they knocked the H552 because “Cannot write to 8x DVDÂ±R media at 16x ” , so buy 16X media. Why would you dock something for not being able to write at a faster speed on slower rated media!? 16X and 8X media is a big change in difference. Overall I am content and for $60 the H552 is a steal.

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:35:49 +0000

Read the reviews at www.cdrlabs.com and www.cdfreaks.com...write quality on this drive is horrible.

Also, who wrote this review? The 552U and the the 552B ARE NOT the same drive with different colored faceplates...they are TWO DIFFERENT MODELS..with the U being the newer version of the also heavily flawed B.