[citation][nom]nukemaster[/nom]Most of these laptop drives have power limits, so yeah, I bet that will be the speed.[/citation]
Usually it's vibration that's the limiting factor. 24x CD-ROM is around 4500RPM. 52x is around 10,400RPM.
24x CD, 8xDVD ?xbluray USB 2.0 (with 2 USB2 port plugs) ROM drives exist so then with USB3 they have twice the power to work with if they still have a cable that plugs into 2 ports.
But I have seen no laptop form factor optical drives that are more than 24x so it's not a power problem but vibration and disk stress problem.
So with this super duper slim drive, they might have to keep the RPMs even lower because they can't dampen the vibration as well as they can with the thicker drives.