20 Best Internal Blu Ray Drive (2023 Updated)

1. It works. It worked out of the box and it works now. I pop in a CD, no problem. I pop in a DVD, no problem. Unfortunately, when I pop in a Blu-Ray (1080 or 4K) I never know if it will work or not or why.

I’ve tried different things like upgrading the firmware, updating windows, looking through the internet for any potential LG drivers that might be needed. I’ve installed the Cyberlink software to see if that had something that would have helped (outside of using VLC or using Media Classic Player).

If I use the BD Advisor, for some reason it doesn’t recognize the player as being connected and somehow needs the internet to check if my drive is fully UHD capable (not sure why or how this roadblock even occurred).

I purchased a Criterion Blu-Ray (Region 1) and when I try to play it, I keep getting errors that the player can’t read it. Then when I try another Blu-Ray disc, it plays super slow. I’m using Windows 10 (latest updates), Ryzen 5 3600X, 32GB of RAM, 500GB SSD drive with ample space left, AMD 5700XT that is 1 year old at this point (with the latest AMD drivers).

Most of my SATA cables are new, my motherboard is an ASRock X570 Pro4. Am I missing something? Should I be downloading or uninstalling certain codecs? Is it because I’m not using Intel?.

Bought this drive because it was alot cheaper than anywhere else. When I picked it up in store I realized why. It wasn’t in a box. Could be that it was used or refurbished? I only ask cause there was no indication on the plastic bag the drive came in.

With that aside the drive works fine. I have burned DVD videos but have not burns bluray disk or played a 4k video disk. I’m sure its all good. Remember for 4k to work your computer must be DHCP 2. 2 to work and you will need some app to watch DVD or Bluray disk.

The drive came With a disk. It had a suite of an older version of CyberMedia version 12.

Product Specs manual is not provided in the box and on LG. Com. After hours and hours of Google search the below questions remain un-answered : (1) How many pins and type of SATA to USB Cable is needed? (2) Are 2 USB plugs necessary in single SATA Cable ? Power Specs label says 5V/12V; 1.

5A/2A (3)Is external power supply required for SATA Cable over and above the power drawn from USB plugs ? (4) Not able to use the Product as SATA Cable type and pins is not known and there is no product specs manual even on LG.

com.

Had this for a year or more, never misses a beat. Fast, reliable, and quiet. I use the drive mainly for backups, onto DVD and BluRay. It’s one of the things which ‘just work’ on my system. Has no problems in Linux – I’ve used it with Debian and Ubuntu, both recognised and used the drive with no configuration required.

I don’t use the drive to watch BluRays – which are a nightmare on Linux. If you want to try you need to install DeCSS and work through the nit-picking detail. Since my monitors are 1080p I don’t actually notice any improvement in video quality anyway.

As the late great Jerry Pournelle would say – recommended.

Just took delivery of this ASUS BW-16D1HT yesterday from Scan Computers which did an excellent job of packaging my purchase. And delivery was super quick! Thanks guys! 🙂 Installation of this drive was a breeze although you might need some extra screws to secure it in your case, ASUS only provided 4 which seems mean.

Right out of the box the user is required to install the various software and this also provides access to ASUS downloads for the latest Firmware. Admittedly this wasn’t as straight forward as I first thought and when clicking ‘Update Firmware’ I was directed to the ASUS website but then had to search for the firmware manually.

Installation of the firmware went smoothly however once downloaded and I am now running version 3. 02. There is a newer firmware version 3. 03 but currently that download is password protected, ASUS didn’t know the password when I asked them.

Opening the drive tray was a little disappointing too, the mechanism is very loud and clunky and the drive tray itself feels a little flimsy. That said operation seems quiet enough once the disc is inserted and the addition of a blue light on the front is nice,.

green lights are so yesterday! The additional Nero BackItUp software might be a welcome feature to some users though this appears to be a time limited feature of just 6 months (Nero BackItUp 5 Pro) Also ASUS provide 6 months free Unlimited WebStorage which is always useful and a link is provided in the associated paperwork.

There’s not much more I can say right now as I haven’t tested the product fully as yet but ASUS products are generally better than some cheaper brands so I’m hopeful it will last for some time yet. Would I recommend it? YES.

Purchased this in order to watch retail (store bought) official 4K UHD Blu-ray discs from my film collection directly on my PC – I can confirm it works perfectly with 2 pieces of software – DVDFab Blu-ray Passkey and a decent media player – PowerDVD 21 Ultra in my case.

I just connected it up with the supplied cables (nice touch) and it all worked perfectly straight away. Ran my DVDFab Passkey software, unlocked the disc, then played it in Power DVD 21 – all in 4K UHD HDR10 – no issues, full menus etc.

This solved a problem that seemingly every other HTPC owner says can’t be solved without major hassles or an older Intel based PC – well, I’m here to tell you this works with an AMD based PC no problem!.

I used this drive to replace another Blu-Ray burner drive that had died after about 7 years of good service. This was the same brand (LG), and the model number differed by only one digit from the other one (this is a WH16NS40, the other was WH14NS40), so it is essentially an exact replacement.

It of course worked perfectly as a replacement for me immediately upon installation. I much prefer the physical eject button on the front panel of this model WH16NS40; on the older WH14NS40 there was a bump on the front panel itself instead.

This drive is new (it has the manufacturer’s warranty), but it is sold as an OEM “bare” drive, with no cables or other accessories, so if you are not purchasing this drive as a replacement it will need a SATA data cable, a SATA power cable, and screws.

There is no packaging when you purchase it off the shelf (there were 2 in stock when I purchased this one; one was literally a bare drive, the other was in a plastic bag. I took the one in the bag). It has worked for me first time, every time, with no coasters, including the first BD I burned with it.

The desktop computer in question had two DVD drives that were harvested several times form successive builds. So they were old. Both failed at the same time. So looking to my favorite computer parts retailer and found these at the right price point.

Slid them in and they operated with no issues. Truly plug and play. Good speeds and no issues reading media. I don’t burn DVD’s anymore, so they have not been used yet in that type of application but I do not expect any problems.

After the first disk, it only worked as a reader. Different software gives different errors, but I’ve seen it recognizing blank disks (newly bought) as having only 1. 3GB free, and another showed 4. 4GB free (yes, I made sure it was free space and not data on the disk) but still bombed out due to space concerns.

I will add that I haven’t tried using it after first use until just now, trying to burn a new install disk. But every disk? Even generics aren’t that bad.

This is the best disc burner I’ve ever used. Burning blu-ray is new territory for me and that works perfectly. The quick play feature is a nice bonus. Most discs spin right up in no time; much faster than any other drive I’ve used before.

I’ve burned close to 100 discs so far and haven’t had a single one fail. I used Verbatim Life Series 25 GB blu-rays and Verbatim AZO DVD+R single-layer discs. Even the tray mechanism feels higher quality than equivalent Samsung, LG, and Asus drives I’ve used before.

Sometimes the tray motor will get stuck on cheaper drives and they require a good smack to get them moving again. I don’t expect that to be an issue with this one. The only thing I haven’t tried is playing a commercial blu-ray movie, but I’m sure that’ll work fine with the right software.

Optical drives are often considered archaic these days, so not many can justify the extra expense. Most computer cases made nowadays don’t even have slots for them anymore! However, I believe they are still necessary for maintaining ownership over one’s data.

Namely, through the creation of cold archival backups recorded to disc. Hard drives will always fail at some point. It’s just a question of “when. ” Relying solely upon cloud-based backups and streaming over the internet only increases one’s reliance upon vulnerable infrastructure.

I believe this pioneer optical drive will be a good long-term solution for those who want to take greater responsibility for irreplaceable digital creations and memories. Recordable DVDs can last up to 30 years or more with proper storage.

The better made discs can last even longer. This drive supporting M-DISC opens up even more archival options that can potentially last generations. I kinda wish that I went with the more expensive drive that supports quad layer blu-ray discs, but the cost per megabyte was hard to justify when single layer blu-rays are fairly cheap.

Piece of cake to fit, all up and running in ten minutes. First thing I noticed, over the external branded USB reader I had, was how quiet it is. Ejecting the tray is a joy, it’s solid and doesn’t flex.

But then the read speeds! Wow getting around 30x on the first five CD’s I tried, the external drive, which is just over three years, was averaging around 9x despite being an “upto” 28x reader. It’s quiet, fast, and takes up no desk space.

Yet to try using it as a blu-ray player, that was a secondary consideration.

Zero failures so far, not sure not what else to say. If you spray them with a pleasing scent they smell perfectly nice. They taste a bit plasticky but no more than you’d expect. I have yet to catch them in bed with the wife.

They’re all exactly the same shape, which is maybe a little bit dull. I mean don’t buy these if you want to just stare at them, they’re really all about sticking data on and for that, well, zero failures so far.

This drive has the lowest offset read of any player I could find of just +6 samples. It supports accurate stream, is capable of reading C2 error info, reads very fast and plays Blu-Rays, CDs, DVDs etc.

I haven’t tried writing a disc but I assume it works just fine. ASUS is a solid company and I haven’t found anything they make to be unsatisfactory. I’m not a fan of Blu-Ray technology and not a fan of the price either, but this drive works well if you are still like me and use CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays often this is worth a punt.

Got this player for ripping my DVDs, Blu-Rays, and 4K Blu-Rays to my Plex server. Works like a charm. I did have to downgrade the firmware to get 4K Blu-Rays to work. This was perfect for my needs.

A very nice looking small DVD writer that backed up all my system for a new mobo and ssd drive with ease. The only downsides for me personally is that i would of preferred a eject button on top of the writer which both opened and closed it, as i found using the one on the front not very easy due to the fact that after it opened you have to close it by hand close to were the button is, and given this is a small and very light writer it will move all over the place, plus the draw is not easy to load the disk to as you need to hold the draw to push the disk onto it.

I purchased this drive for backing up my Blu-ray and Ultra Blu-ray library. This drive is supported by the “LibreDrive” scheme so various software is able to utilise this to efficiently and reliably person this task, whereas other drives not supported could fail on various disks.

I’ve also tested this drive for digital audio extraction (CD Audio) with EAC and have found that so far it’s been 100. 0% accurate for that task too, despite it not being featured on the lists of most accurate drives (probably cause it’s too new).

Clear improvement from Pioneer BDR-209K BluRay burner it is replacing which was an older benchmark in optical media drives. Nicer aesthetic, quicker burning, can also do M-DISC. Quicker buffer time and read/write times.

Honestly worth an upgrade even if the old one wasn’t on its way out in regards to tray opening/jamming after several years of use.

Perfect for making backups of UHD discs. I like to backup my 4k UHD discs to a NAS drive so I can use my Plex server instead of messing about with discs and set top UHD Disc players.

Just upgraded DVD burner to Blu-Ray with this drive installed into the HP8300 CMT computer. So far, I have only burned data discs, and all have burned fine with no duds. The Cyberlink software is OK, I guess.

A couple of annoyances, but it is fairly intuitive. You do need Blu-Ray capable software to burn BR discs. Maybe my regular editing/burning suite will post an upgrade, but in the meantime the Cyberlink software will perform the data disc burning task.

This LG drive seems to be a good unit; no strange noises; just does the job. We’ll see how it holds up. For now, I can recommend it. I may get a 2nd drive for the wife’s computer. UPDATE JULY 4, 2020 Have just installed 2nd burner on wife’s computer.

Unlike my computer, burning software would not initialize. Firmware must be updated, it appears. For my computer, that seems to have been an automatic part of the installation process. In Win10, after installation of Cyberlink Suite, scroll down program list to ODD Auto Firmware Update.

After that process was completed, the burning software was enabled. Her Blu-Ray burner is now ready for action. Because her computer has separate video card, her computer will play Blu-Ray movies with the Cyberlink software, but a standalone Blu-Ray player has more features.

As to mine, I have now burned about 30 Blu-Ray data discs, with no duds. I am using the Verbatim 6x and 16x blanks exclusively. So far, so good.

Aside from testing the device to make sure my SATA/Power was good, installing the OS, a few software items, and burning a few disks to make sure all was well and the device worked, I honestly haven’t touched it since.

I don’t see myself using this outside of an urge to install an old game that’s on physical media. This is just my personal feelings, but if I watch movies on my PC, it’s either via streaming or already downloaded to the drive.

If the very rare occasion strikes I want to watch something disk-based, I have a TV with a larger screen and player for movies. If the even rarer occasion comes that I need to burn a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD, this will do just fine.

That being said, if you use an optical drive often, unless you have some really rare specific need, this drive will do more than fine, and read and write everything you’ll need from old CD-ROMs to Blu-Ray.

Optical media on a PC is starting to become a thing of the past with most everything you could ever want being available via download or streaming. Speeds and read times are also less relevant as games and other content are less and less being read from a CD.

I almost forgot to even buy an optical drive for my new build as I use them so rarely I even forget I had one on my old computer. I’ve also seen reviews citing it doesn’t come with connectors, but that’s not uncommon.

Your motherboard when bought is going to come with all your SATA cables, and if buying as a replacement for an store-bought computer’s OEM drive for example, just use the already provided cables.

The drive uses Zone Level recording for the 8X Burning on the DVD+R DL discs. This means that for the first layer about 2/3 is burned at 6x and the other 1/3 at 8x. Then it switches to the 2nd layer and burns the 1st 1/3 at 8x and the remaining 2/3 at 6x.

Some discs it uses CAV recording and some it uses Zone Level recording. Depends on the disk and the speed written at. As far as the varying speeds the previous user was seeing. It uses an ‘Intelligent’ Burning algorithm where it checks the writing quality every so often (the speed fluctuations) as it is writing, and based on the checking, it then lower the overall burning speed if it finds the disc can’t handle the current speed.

Only Firmware released so far is v1. 10. I have verified the writing speeds and VERY GOOD or BETTER writing quality on the following discs so far; Verbatim DVD+R 16x (MCC-004) – written to at 8x, 12x, & 16x.

Verbatim DVD+R DL 8x (MKM-003) – written to at 4x, 6x, & 8x Verbatim CD-R 52x – written to at 16x, 24x, 32x, & 40x Verbatim Blu-Ray SL 6x (VERBATIMe) – written to at 6x, 8x, 10x, & 12x. Optical Quantum Blu-Ray SL 4x (PHILIPR04) – written to at 4x, 6x, & 8x.

Verbatim Blu-Ray DL 4x (VERBATIMd) – written to at 4x, 6x, & 8x Verbatim Blu-Ray DL 4x (MEI-T02 really Panasonic) – Written to at 4x, 6x, & 8x. Optical Quantum DL 6x (CMCMAG-DI6) – written to at 4x, 6x, & 8x.

Buy this drive for the hardware – it’s a good drive. Consider the CyberLink software as trash and don’t bother with it. One comment if you are looking to play Blu-Ray movie discs with this drive: you will need to buy a competent blu-ray player that pays the required royalties to Sony.

That rules out all free blu-ray players since they won’t play the rights-protected new blu-ray discs. In theory, I would think the latest CyberLink player would do this, but I won’t go down the CyberLink path again.

I proved to myself that other commercial players such as IDEER (trial version) would play new rights-protected movies whereas CyberLink PowerDVD 10 (and even the trial version of PowerDVD 13 – at least for me) would not.

But as I said, I’ll stick to watching Blu-ray movies using my player attached to my TV.

I replaced an LG BH16NS40 that I used in a 2013 build. This new LG BH16NS40 is physically different from the seven-year-old optical drive it replaces. The first thing I noticed is that it is faster and has 100% reliability in reading a commercial data DVD with my car’s factory shop manuals on it, something that occasionally took two or three tries to load its Apache-based JAVA factory repair manuals.

I have Blu-ray software on my computer and didn’t use the included CD-ROM. I have backups on 50 GB dual-layer Blu-ray data disks and will continue to use Blu-ray for archival backups.

I have actually owned three of this exact same model and every one of them has failed in the very same way. (Luckily I purchased extended warranties) They last for a while. One died in three months. The second at 1 year and the third died on me today 3-15-20 after 14 months of service.

The (blue light) laser that reads the Blu-ray discs simply fails and the drive will no longer read or write Blu-ray discs. The red laser may still work for DVDs and CDs, but that is a separate laser that continues to work after the blue light laser fails.

I do not recommend these LG drives, and LG has never responded to my complaints about this problem.

This appears to be the retail version of the super terrible WH16NS40 drive of which I had _two_ that did not work. They would overheat after a couple of burns and stop reading disks altogether. After a cool down, they would start working again (sort of).

The _REAL_ BH16NS40 is a different drive and it looks different. It is bulletproof. The front tray has only the LG logo on it. The MDisc and Bluray logos are on the drive. You can see this on the LG website.

I don’t fault B&H here. Two other online retailers and a brick&mortar show a picture of the real drive and ship you the one I got. All of them have been taken (?) by LG. Since LG has elected to be completely dishonest about this (no surprise there), I will not buy any of their products anymore.

My new laptop lacks an optical reader, so rather than get a new external USB DVD, I grabbed this BluRay internal drive hoping that my all purpose SATA adapter would work. So what if there are a zillion wires on my desk.

The ability to store 25GB on one disk is far better than just another 4GB DVD drive. Sure I could have used the adapter with a scavenged DVD drive, but the first one I tried was 15 years old, slow, and objected to being woken up.

Anyway, I was driving past the MicroCenter and had to pee, so I did and on the way out bought this drive. IT WORKS! Buy this and back up everything. Problem with this contest is that it is a NOOPT. The rules state “Micro Center will give away one Monitor, worth $579.

99 or less, to two eligible entrants each calendar month. Prizes must be picked up in person from the nearest Micro Center within 14 days after the winner is notified. ” How the heck am I going to go to the store if I’m quarantined through at least April and the store is closed.

It would be nice if MicroCenter would read the rules, and update them to mail me the monitor, which I clearly deserve for writing this brilliant review. Thanks, Jeff.

I need to replace the Panasonic UJ262 in my Dell Precision M4800 with another 9. 5inch drive since the Panasonic was no longer reading and playing Blu-rays without boxing and distortion. I also like the fact that the BU40N writes BD-R’s at 6x versus the Panasonic 4x.

I have not yet tested the blu-ray writing but I did try out and ready the blu-rays that were causing problems on the Panasonic and it read/displayed perfectly fine. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because the disc spinning in the drive especially during start up and slow down is quite noisy (relative to the other blu-ray drives I have/have had).

By the way, on both the Panasonic and this one, it is a no brainer to install – just slide it in and push it into the connector. My one concern is there is no hole or screw to keep it from moving and so I just taped (with electrical tape) the drive at the top/back to the Precision chasis to help insure it does not move).

I like that it’s a UHD drive and after updating the firmware via the instructions on the MakeMKV forums it does everything you’d want it to. My only complaint is it’s a lot louder than the drive that was originally in my HP laptop.

Edit: It no longer reads either data or video DVDs. That function lasted about a year, now it will try to load them but error out. Seems like it might be a problem with the DVD laser itself. The Blu-Ray still works great.

I only use it for ripping movies and I have several USB DVD drives so I can just use those when I have DVDs, but it’s still pretty annoying.

I brought this as a replacement to the LG Slim drive on my Dell Inspiron 660 and it was the exact same drive. This was perfect because Dell did not the exact drive on its site. I did not want to get a DVD slim drive.

The drive was easy to install, however, I had to remove the face overlay because of my dell had its own overlay face. It was a bit difficult to remove (I was scared I was going to break the replacement).

Luckily , there were videos online that showed how to remove the faceplate.

Not a lot to say, Fitted perfectly in my laptop, works fine, burned blu-rays no bother. Very good purchase

Quiet with fast load times. Can even read protected PS4 discs.

Super thank you

This is a great internal DVD/BlueRay writer. easy to use, reliable and very well priced. I have no hesitation in recommending it

This drive works. It was easy to install and was recognised and operational by my Windows 10 PC within seconds. I successfully burned and verified 15 Verbatim BDXL 100GB discs at 4x speed. Highly recommend.

Good product. No software comes with it, compared to some others. Also could have saved few pounds if I shopped around a bit.

Great little Blu Ray / DVD / CD burner. Worked straight out of the box on XP-SP3, I am using Nero Express 9 on XP to burn Blu Ray data backup discs, all my PCs (XP & Win10) now have this burner in them as standard.

It’s supposed to burn BD XL discs but I haven’t tried that yet.

This little gadget completes my PC upgrades. Haven’t tested it out fully But my free option to watch my MCU Blurays did NOT work – not this products fault, they said as much If you’re buying this to view Blurays, expect to purchase software as well.

It can burn M Disks and so far I have found it easy to use which is what most of us look for. It replaced a BR Burner which when I bought it did not include a Disk, Cables or mounting screws. To me this is service.

Bought this because it seemed reasonably priced and well reviewed. After only a few months of ownership, the drive began to take over a minute to show up in windows. On top of this, it was very loud.

Then it would not connect or show up in Windows at all. After one year, it is finally completely dead. I regret spending money on this purchase.

Earlier review the drive stopped showing up on my system, I thought the drive was bad and after purchasing a new drive learned the problem is with my motherboard. I installed this in a MSI 760GM-P23 motherboard and this drive now works perfectly.

Some time it pays to trouble shoot a problem and not jump to conclusions like the big box store wiz kids always do. Now I have 2 BluRay drives, one for each of my computers.

I gave this the rating that I did because while the drive works perfectly for me, it doesn’t come with any software to actually play Blu-ray discs. In order to watch Blu-ray discs, you have to purchase software that supports Blu-ray, Windows Media Player doesn’t support Blu-ray, nor does VLC Player.

I don’t know about Windows 8, because I have Windows 7 on my computer. I haven’t tried burning anything with this yet, because I don’t have recordable Blu-ray discs.