Feature Set:  

This product comes with some nice extra features such as photo editing, DVD playing and disk labeling software. This burner comes with a one-year warranty and can burn dual-layer DVDs whether you want to use DVD+R DL or DVD-R DL format.

However, this product cannot connect by firewire and cannot read DVD-RAM or CD+G karaoke disks.

Burner Speed:  

This burner offers good speeds when you are trying to write/rewrite/read a DVD disk; however, the CD elements are not as fast. This burner also writes to DVD+R DL at 8x and writes to DVD-R DL disk at 4x. The speeds of this burner excel in some areas, however if you are looking for a burner with the fastest speeds with all types of media, check out our top choice for external DVD burners.

Help/Support:  

We contacted the support department for HP and they responded within a day, they also have live chat and a toll-free support phone number available. Hewlett-Packard also posts FAQs and a troubleshooting guide for quick reference. In short, their customer service and support are great and we really liked the fact that there were multiple ways to contact this company.

In general, the HP DVD-740e external DVD burner will perform most basic functions. However, if you are looking for an external DVD burner that is a hair faster and a few bucks cheaper then we suggest checking out MegaSTOR.