It's high time to think about beauty, - I thought when choosing CD-RW drives for testing. At last, my attention was drawn by recorders Sony CRX 160E and Acer 1208. Of course, the Acer has no extraordinary novations in the design, but at the same time the drive looks more advantageous as compared with the Ricoh MP7200 or any other model from the TEAC series. The CRX 160E drive doesn't, in fact, differ from its brothers, except its black color. Any attempt of drive makers to bring into the design of CD recorders something unique should be welcome. It's important, though, that such imperfections of the design won't distract users from low performance or defects of the device. So far I haven't seen a successful combination of the performance, quality and design, except TDK drives. But let's look at the newcomers...