SAMSUNG Intros World’s Thinnest Optical Disc Drive For UltraBooks and Tablets

Korean company Samsung Electronics has reportedly introduced today the new slim external DVD-Writer called SE-218BB. This optical disc drive (ODD) sets the industry standard for thin ultra portable DVD-Writer drives.

Build with Intel’s UltraBooks in mind, the SE-218BB will join a new generation of slim laptop designs. Intel was recently talking about thinner hard disk drives and thinner ODDs and it seems Samsung was sharing the thought.

The SE-218BB features a compact size that is 18% thinner than the standard light DVD writers.

Samsung claims that this is the world's thinnest external optical disc drive with just 14 millimeters in height. That’s 0.55 inches in imperial.

When comparing it with Samsung’s own slim ODDs released previously, the SE-218BB  is 8% lighter that the rest of the pack.

Using Smart Power technology, SE-218BB connects through an USB to PCs and notebook computers. The power is delivered through the same port as the drive doesn’t come with any external AC adapter.

For Tablet PCs, Samsung says the OS must be Android Honeycomb OS 3.1 or above for the SE-218BB play DVD content on the tablets.

Featuring the usual Buffer Under Run technology, the new SE-218BB ODD is an ecological product, made with lead-free soldering technology that eliminates harmful materials such as Pb, cd, cr+6, Hg, PBBs and PBDE.

The official write speed  specifications of the slim little wonder are as following: 24X for CD-ROM and CD-RW discs, 8X for DVD±R discs, 5X for DVD-RAM discs , 6X for DVD+R Dual Layer discs, 6X for DVD-R Dual Layer discs, 8X for DVD+RW discs and 6X for DVD-RW discs.

Surprisingly, the drive only comes with a minuscule 1 MB buffer. The official access time is a high 190ms and the whole thing weighs 255 grams. That’s around half a pound.

The price sits at 59.99 USD. That is around 46 EUR for the European customers.

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