All those conflicting opinions must be really confusing for the OP.

The thing is, you can't really judge a brand from one good or one bad experience.
Samsung had a problem with the moving mechanism of their optical drives for a long time. I'm not sure what the situation is now, but in the past, more than half of Samsung drives developed a problem with the mechanism within a short time. In addition to my own experiences with other people's drives, there were numerous complaints about Samsung drives in forums and newsgroups. I even wrote to Samsung suggesting a solution to the problem. My personal policy is "Never a Samsung optical drive". (OTOH, I like their monitors and keyboards).
Having said that, I repeat that I'm not sure what current Samsung models are like.
Last week, a friend of mine bought a Samsung 22X SH-S223F to replace his old drive. The drive was detected in BIOS and showed up in Windows Explorer, but
always crashed Windows whenever it attempted to open the contents of a disc - any disc, including new original driver discs. I tried various things in BIOS and Windows but the problem remained the same. It worked perfectly with two of my own computers. Other drives work perfectly with my friend's computer.
When he reported the problem to the shop, they told him that they have had problems with several Samsung drives with certain motherboards. They exchanged the drive with a different model before I could try anything else.
I have not used Sony for quite some time now, so I can't offer an informed opinion. My past experience with them was OK. So were my experiences with Liteon. At present I have two LG DVD-writers and they've been working fine so far.
When I mention my experiences, I'm not just talking about my own machines. I also take into account my experiences with many drives that I've installed and maintained for other over the years.