I would sell mine, which reads anything you would put in. I mean ANYTHING!
The only reason why I would sell it is to get rid of this damn IDE interface!
Right now, I don't know what is the best brand/model. I have been out of the loop, 'cos I never needed to look at anything else because of my current drive.
Anyway, don't blame the writer if you buy crappy media and burn them. Crappy media are so called for a good reason
Get some Japanese high quality stuff. You won't regret it.
I personally would go with Liteon in SL (Liteon bought Benq, and Benq used to be a king in optical drives in 2003-2005).
I personally don't like Samsung when it comes to optical drives. I've seen people curse Samsung so many times. So if Sony are selling rebadged Samsungs, maybe you should keep away from them.
But, don't forget that every good company puts out a crappy product every now and then and if you are unfortunate enough to buy one of those, well YOU ARE UNFORTUNATE

Best thing to do is, first go and check which models they have, and then head onto club.cdfreaks.com and go to the respective subforum (for the respective brand) and check for a review for that exact model. Pay attention towards the conclusion, if the graphs are like greek to you. You will know if this is a good drive to buy or not.