Haven't seen the NEC drive. I have a ricoh + and a sony +/- dvd burners - BEWARE if using your drive to rip dvd movies(for backup purposes), get some feedback on this drive first.
When i bought the sony dwu-10a, i took out the ricoh mp5125a as the sony was multi format and - r disks are cheaper!
How annoyed i was when i discovered that the sony cannot read anything! I had to stick the ricoh back in, and not give it to the missus!
If you are not going to use it for this, then don't worry, i'm sure the NEC is a good drive!
Just my 2 penneth.