Drop of prices and wide spread of DVD recorders mostly affected the market of external „repacked“ DVD recorders. For long time now, their options do not justify its high price, and necessity of external supplying only hardens its usage. For producing of its external SE-S184M model, Samsung approached in classical manner by repacking basic internal model, without adding new functions. As base for producing this model served S182D internal model, i.e. its derivate S182M with support for LightScribe technology. Mother model was not so effective on our test due to detained Lead-In which appeared while using late versions of firmware.

In the very beginning great plus of Samsung´s recorder is its firmware different from problematic S182D, so we did not encounter disputable effect. Although it sounds completely illogical, optic-related tests showed that S184M gives slightly poorer results than his older brother. Unfortunately, due to harden access to PUH within external recorder, we were not able to determine whether Samsung changed Sony´s KWS PUH, or it is responsible for slightly poorer results of firmware. In LightScribe tests, the device was simply brilliant making so far the strongest contrast between dark and light shades.


18x speed is slightly over 23 MB in second, which is big load for USB port, although S184M has excellent NEC´s USB interface. Moreover, we were able to extract maximal power mainly on newest generation motherboards with Intel´s chipset, while we had fifty-fifty success rate with motherboards with nVidia´s chipsets (flow mainly jammed on 16-17 MB).