20 Best Usb Blu Ray Drive (2023 Updated)

Before I jump in, I’ve worked in IT and the video/audio industry for years now. This includes everything from building custom PC builds, servers, to setting up home theaters, auditoriums and stages. With that being said here’s my experience and I hope it helps others: This external drive can play DVDs and regular Blu-ray discs.

I tested several without any issues. If you’re buying it for that then you “shouldn’t have issues. ” Apparently it can also play 4K Blu-ray discs as advertised according to some other customers. *** However in my particular case I was only able to play DVDs and regular Blu-ray discs.

I was not able to run the installation software CD that came with the external drive. It’s an old OEM CyberLink software. It kept giving errors and crashing. I ended up purchasing the newest CyberLink PowerDVD 20 Ultra software which allows and supports 4K Blu-ray media on players such as this for both Windows and MacOS.

After installing the new version of CyberLink PowerDVD 20 Ultra and checking the player drive for updated drivers I was still not able to play 4K Blu-ray discs. FYI I also have all the latest Windows 10 Pro operating system updates along with the system drivers.

There are several requirements that you will need to run 4K Blu-ray playback and that I understand. However with a fairly new and mid-range laptop, and here are the specifications: Operating System: Windows 10 Pro Processor: Intel i7 9750H Memory: 32GB Hard Drive: 1TB SSD Video Card: Intel HD 630/ Nvidia 2060 RTX I still wasn’t able to achieve 4K Blu-ray playback.

I mention the specifications because they’re important to the next issue. Even with updated drivers for the integrated and dedicated video cards and motherboard I was not able to play the 4K Blu-ray discs.

The CyberLink software will give an error saying that the computer’s cards are not capable or updated even though they are according to Intel and Nvidia’s specifications and latest patches. NOTE: I opted with CyberLink’s new software because it’s one of the few certified ones that can actually play back 4K media content.

There are forums with other users with more powerful builds and as prepared as I was and they still weren’t able to play 4K Blu-rays either. There’s also the issue of HDCP connections and HDMI which I won’t get into but that will also affect other users.

Bottom line in my experience and others across the forums, it’s a great DVD and Blu-ray player but I wouldn’t advertise or count on it to play 4K Blu-ray discs. The build is on par with the LG brand and it arrived in good condition.

Sadly it’s the only 4K Blu-ray player that Best Buy sells and one of the few in the market.

Just recently had a chance to use this little goodie. I’m (slowly) building a new machine which has no optical drive slot, so I bought this unit. It runs beautifully, helping me to transfer files from one machine to the other.

Also, I tested a couple of DVD movies on my old machine with it. Those DVDs refuse to play in my old machine, and I’d thought they were possibly corrupted. They ran perfectly as well. So this new player has passed to critical tests for me.

Very happy with this. Now I only need to be VERY careful with its tray. It has no noticeable support when it’s out, it seems a bit flimsy, and pressing a DVD down into position seems sort of ‘reckless’.

I trust, tho, the great reviews I’ve read at various sites with no mention of the trays breaking. Anyway, thanks LG, I hope to be using this item for a long time.

For those of us who still need an external dvd drive / writer, I recommend this New Upgrade from their previous DVD Writer and basic Blu-Ray reader/writer. However, the 4k UHD feature is void if you don’t purchase the proper update software.

The Cyberlink software that is included is ONLY a trial version. Back in the day when you purchased a unit like this, the FULL VERSION software was included. My How things have changed. LOL. Oh, btw, don’t expect tech support from LG.

Thank the Stars for Best Buy Total Tech Support. LOL.

01 Jan 2022 — I purchased this drive. It worked great reading Blu-ray discs of all kinds (film, TV shows, etc. ). Didn’t use it for writing. It is a bit loud, yes, but that’s because it spins discs fast to read 24MB per second off dual- or quad-layer Blu-ray medium.

Mid-February 2022 — The drive began to behave erradically. Discs would stop being read, I’d have to power reset the drive to get it to be recognized by the computer. Eventually it became so problematic that I couldn’t use it anymore.

7 April 2022 — I asked for a replacement under the warranty from OWC. 20 April 2022 — They received it, confirmed the behavior and approved the replacement. They were not quick to run their own tests on it.

13 May 2022 — I finally received a replacement drive. RMA took 5 weeks from start to finish. I continued using the drive until today 26 Aug 2022 when the drive outright failed dead. No lights, no tray movement, nothing.

Through usage the drive can get quite hot, depending what it’s doing, and I suspect that’s what killed it. I sent a request for another replacement, but I don’t have any hopes of getting another. Two drives failed within 8 months.

I would suggest NOT using this drive, and look for another manufacturer.

I have been a loyal OWC customer for many years. I have had a number of Elite Pro products. Since I have an iMac, I have always needed an external optical drive. The Elite Pro bodies and casing match my iMac and other accessories.

They have always performed well over the years. However, the last two devices ha LG MDisk BlueRay/DVD/CD drives installed. Both have failed after approx 12-1 months. This time I took the drive out the OWC case.

hoping for a loose cable. No luck. I did all the recommended trouble shooting items on the checklist. No luck. I expect an optical drive, that is used mainly for DVD read only items, ie, course war DVD for classes I take.

to last for years, vice months. I guess I will find an alternate brand moving forward. Its a shame that this happened.

I bought one of these for my MacBook Pro a couple of years ago, and it refused to mount discs. I exchanged it for another with the same problem so I got my money back. When I got my M1 Mac mini, I thought Id give it another chance so I ordered another one.

When I first received the drive, it mounted just fine and worked very well. But then, probably when I upgraded Monterey to a new version, it stopped mounting discs again. The computer recognizes the hardware is there, since it will eject the unmounted disc with the OWC Unmounter utility, but the discs never appear on the desktop, in the Music app, in Toast Titanium, or Disk Utility.

The drive works no better with my M1 MacBook Pro. Ive tried different cables, different USB-A > USB-C adapters, reboots, all the usual possible solutions – no dice.

It pretty much does what it says in the description. My only detractor, is that no one wants to deal with licensing or included software anymore, it would seem, and I had to dig to find software to make this do everything I wanted.

There are some things I still haven’t gotten configured, but that’s on me and my limited time. At the moment, at least, I have DVD playback working on both my Mac and amy Windows Tablet. I wanted something for my workshop, so I could play the stacks of anime DVDs I’ve not watched in 15 years while I work, and wanted something on my Mac that I could use for backing up old archive data and ripping media.

You’ll likely find that BluRay playback is difficult, if not impossible, without the right software, and OS makers like Apple and Microsoft long ago gave up on optical media. As such, you won’t find a dedicated player for Blu Ray, like Apple had for DVDs.

The fact that companies can’t just give us a properly licensed solution on a disc, in box. Manufacturers and OS makers are both making the user jump through hoops, and a LOT of the software that can be found is either just outright bad, or doesn’t seem to work anyway.

That’s what keeps me from giving it fully 5 stars.

USB-C connector on the back is poor, and very touchy. The device is very thin and light, so if you aren’t careful to hold the unit steady when inserting or removing discs, the USB cable will move slightly and the drive will disconnect (you will hear the Windows sounds for disconnecting, and maybe then reconnecting – if you are lucky).

This results in strange behaviors, depending on the app you are using the drive with, and a lot of wasted time trying to get it to reconnect and be recognized by your apps. Other than this, the device itself works as you would expect.

But definitely needs a better connector design that isn’t so flaky when you touch the case. Maybe I just got a bad one.

Don’t know why so many laptops don’t come with CD Drives anymore. And those few desktops that feature them will only do CD/Blu-ray, or CD/DVD (mostly the latter). But then along comes this little external drive, that will do all three! I can listen to music or install files/drives for other items; I can can watch a movie on DVD; or I can even watch a movie on Blu-ray! What’s more, I can even write to all three file types.

One little drive with all 3 features and at a really great price; what more can you ask for?!.

The Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD Blu-Ray Burner and 4K Blu-Ray DVD player is premium device. It looks sleek, it is quite compact (even compared to my other USB Blu-Ray burners), it has a modern USB-C interface, and it is a slot-loading model.

Noise during 4K UHD Blu-Ray movie play is on par with my other USB burners. I didn’t give it a 5-star review for 3 reasons: (1) The version of Cyberlink PowerDVD that is included with the drive (a serial number is provided for downloading) isn’t capable of playing 4K UHD Discs.

Given the premium price of the drive at ~ $175, Pioneer could provide a watered-down version (or even a trial version) or PowerDVD capable of playing 4K UHD discs. Isn’t one of the reasons to purchase this drive is so that we can enjoy 4K UHD DVDs on our computers/laptops? That being said, I already own a licensed version of the Cyberlink PowerDVD software capable of playing 4K UHD discs, so it wasn’t ultimately an issue for me.

(2) The drive doesn’t have an activity LED or light. I cannot recall the last time I had any type of CD/DVD drive for a computer that lacked an activity light. Again, for the premium price this should be an included feature of the drive.

-assuming that this is possible with a slot-loading drive. (3) This drive is expensive! $175 is a serious investment, albeit for a premium drive. Lite-On makes a 4K UHD player and Blu-Burner (which I also own) that has a USB 3.

0 (not USB-C) interface, but it isn’t a slot loading model. It costs over $50 less and is also of excellent build quality.

I hear that people use the software program MakeMKV with this unit to be able to watch their UHD Blu-Rays on any computer. Great!! It also uses USB-C which is good, since this is the new standard, and it carries data and power to the unit.

This is definitely the best disc player to get if you want to watch all the formats of Blu-ray, or DVD on your computer.

I used to archive to CD in the 90s then DVD then BR but every few years had to perform a do over because disks made then used dyes to burn the data. Even when stored under the best conditions I would redo them as a precaution.

M-disc doesn’t burn using dyes and I can rip my archives and know the data is going to be safe for decades. Problem lately has been phasing out of optical drives. Thing is those like me need to archive beyond cloud or external platter/SS hard drives.

I wanted something not just for ripping but allows me to install software I have on disk I perpetual licenses for. I gave it a test run archiving 20GB of RAW+JPEG photos from a trip 4 years ago. Placed a 25GB single layer (SL) m-disc and ripped at the 2X speed and 45 minutes later I got those files onto a medium that will last decades.

By the way, it’s was quiet and didn’t notice a heat problem. Haven’t ripped using the 50GB dual layer (DL) or 100GB triple layer (TL) but specs say it can and I certainly plan to. It’s size is nice so it’s easy to transport.

No need for a separate power supply because it uses the USB cable to power the drive. The only down side is USB connection. If you’ve owned a lot of Western Digital external drives then you will have a spare USB-A to USB micro B super speed cables (has an odd look).

These days we’re seeing more USB-C/Thunderbolt in place of the old A style on laptops. So consider getting a male A to male C USB connector if you don’t have A ports but have the C ports. As noted, this is powered through just the USB cable and my first time was with an AIO desktop without optical drive.

Haven’t tested it using just my detachable laptop’s battery. The burning software is CyberLink and you just download it. Once you register on the Pioneer website, they provide a download link. Activation key for the CyberLink software is on the instruction book.

Considering the price, features, and being a I’ll have it when I need it. externals, I would say it’s worth getting.

I got a new laptop which like nearly all modern laptops lacks an optical drive. I needed a portable one, so I opted for this because I had nothing to play a blu ray with. I’ve learned that Blu Ray is not as straightforward as DVD playing was.

You need software. I’m not aware of any operating system that supports Blu Ray natively. Recent windows versions don’t support DVD either. I started looking for free options naturally. Most of them did not work or were not stable.

They might work on one of my machines but not another. Long story short, you will probably need to purchase software to do Blu Ray at least to play commercial disks (more later on that). Fortunately they all seem to have a trial period, so you can verify they suit your needs before purchasing.

I’m not recommending since i found different hardware may work while others won’t. I would say don’t think about doing Blu Ray in windows without at least a core I5 processor. A high end graphics card might get you around that limit, but i don’t know.

You should plan on some experimentation before you start relying on it for Blu Ray. Ultimately remember Blu Ray got the nod not because it was best, but because it offered the best copy protection. The system requires that the player download code from the kisk to unlock the disk and play it properly.

I think this is where the free software stumbles. Some codecs need to be licensed. If you are only using it to record and play your own home made Blu Ray disks, the free versions might work for that.

But, again, plan to experiment!! Despite the Blu Ray challenges which would be true for any drive I suspect, it is a good clean well built drive and I’m happy with my purchase. I could not give it 5 eggs because of the very poor documentation.

CH.

If you have a lot of CDs and DVDs that need backing up, this puppy is a fantastic investment. Does as fine a job w/ blu-rays as can be expected, considering the density of the format. As it’s pretty much the physical media standard now, it’d be nice if the ripping process wasn’t an full-day investment.

The length of the included USB cable seems to indicate the drive is meant more for laptops than desktops. Again, though, as fewer and fewer desktop towers are being made to accommodate ODDs, and as fewer ODDs are being made, a longer cable – at least 3′ – would have been nice.

Still, w/ the increasing rarity of internal and external ODDs, beggars can’t be choosers. And it’s not like longer USB-A to Micro-B cables are hard to come by, either. So take the dive. It even comes in black if that’s more your speed.

I purchased this burner to replace a pioneer BDR-XD05s burner which I donated to a chamber music non-profit, so that I could give them archival video as well as audio. Between the two recorders, I’ve sucessfully burned about 30 of the Microboards MEDB-10001 media.

However, since I was running low, I bought a 50pk spindle of the Verbatim, and the first two tries did not work at any speed. B&H online chat redirects to email in these days of covid-19, and it has taken a week for them to assert a hard-line position of once media is opened, that is the end of the conversation.

I find this distressing, to say the least. It would seem to me to be good business for them to at least put some warning up about the product not being compatible with all the BDR-media that they offer for sale, and it would be good business relations to discuss whether it would be reasonable for them to discuss a one-time partial credit toward the purchase or replacement media known to work.

I completely get that the returned 48 discs out of 50 would be useless to them, (and said as much in my first attempt to conact them). Although I have been a loyal and happy customer for more than a decade, have purchased in excess of $20K of gear, and have only attempted to return two items – one exchanged for a like item that was defective on arrival, and one that did not fill a need as advised by a B&H staffer – I am very unhappy with this turn of events, and will henceforth be less effusive in my referrals on their behalf.

So I offer this dire warning – if your current kind of media becomes no longer available, try out the smallest quantity possible, and be warned of B&H’s uncompromising policy on media.

I just built a PC to replace my 9-year-old Dell. That last computer had an internal optical drive that I still used occasionally (e. g. currently ripping my DVDs & Blurays since I’ve had discs go bad in the past).

I went with external because it would be more flexible to use with a laptop if necessary and it would be one less thing to reinstall if I built another PC in the future. I was very surprised how small the drive was.

It’s about the same size as 2 CD cases stacked, even a little shorter one direction! It’s also pretty quiet. Yes, at high-speed read/write jobs you can hear it but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s quieter than my old internal drive and very stable; very little vibration.

For longer, slower jobs like ripping a Bluray or playing a disc real-time, it’s basically silent. I really appreciate the top-load since I set this on top of my PC that sits next to me under my desk and is easier to use there than a front-load tray.

And they designed the lid very well; it’s spring assisted and lifts with the gentlest touch. This is really nice because the drive is so small and light, if it were not so easy to open you’d have to hold it with both hands to keep it from moving around while you handle it.

Instead it’s easy to do with one hand. USB 3. 0 transfer speeds are very good for these kinds of jobs. Well, we use optical drives less and less as time goes by but Pioneer has a really solid solution here while there is still a need.

I wanted a high quality external drive. My old one was a “LITEON”, and very good, however it stopped opening on demand and needed replacing. There is a huge price jump between basic, very slim units that take their power from the USB port and those, like this model, which have an outboard power supply and a more substantial build.

This model also reads blu-ray discs, though I didn’t need that. Its not the very latest. If you want Windows 11 compatibility then you pay considerably more. This is a comprehensive model that is Windows 10 compatible and very fast.

It has greater read accuracy than my previous device which is a major plus. If used with software such as dbpoweramp, then you have to read a few CDs before it is automatically set up – be patient, that’s definitely worth it to establish the “offset”.

Despite the high price, I’m happy with my purchase, because I’m achieving what I wanted without any trouble. I’m also glad that it provides the software and functionality for quite sophisticated backups.

NB. SCAN had the best price, despite the annoying addition of post & packing.

Do not use power2 go software included and do not use, buy, or install any version of it including 13. Does no work in windows 10 OS to recognize or see usb external burners or blu-ray burners. Just had a e-mail chats with the company and they played it down like nothing was wrong, was working ok until some update windows did and the power2go started malfunctioning.

Troubleshooted the not recognizing my usb Asus blu-ray burner any more to their software problem. Used this software for years, but, not now. Told them I was dropping their software due to it not working any more in windows 10 Pro 64 OS and started using Ashampoo burning Studio 23 which works just fine and recognizes the Asus external Blu-ray usb drive.

Cyberlink is not keeping up to date on their software updates and malfunctions in windows 10 environment and has dropped off the top 15 lists for burner software and their reviews are not good any more.

Other that that, this drive is a great external blu-ray burner and bought as an update to the BW-12D1X-U, thou it is large and bulky and works best with desktop computers not having a blu-ray burner.

First let me say that this burner works with MAC OS, but the software (Nero) does not. I knew this going into it. There is no NERO for MAC. I use different programs, like DVDfab. Toast 20 Pro was a bust, by the way, but not because of the burner.

However, you just plug this burner in and that is all you need to do, whatever software you use after that does the rest. The reason I got this burner was because my main issue has been with burning BD-R Dual Layers with a Pioneer burner.

Most often, they did not work. The Blu ray player would stall at the layer break. And often, the burnin process would stall at the layer break, too. I can’t tell you how many Dual Layer BD-R’s I had to throw into the garbage because of it.

So, I took a chance with this burner in the hopes that this would not be a problem. I was VERY happy to see that, indeed, it’s not a problem. I have burnt nearly 20 BD-R Dual Layers so far and ALL have worked.

Thus far, I have used Optical Quantum BD-R DL (50 GB). Have not tried Verbatim, but I am sure those would also work. As far as the burner itself, it is extremely quiet and solid; so quiet, actually, that sometimes I have to look at it to make sure it is actually burning.

Then, the little flashing blue light on the side (the top one stays solid whole the burner is turned on) tells me that, yes, it is. The Pioneer burner would float all over my desk when burning or even when reading CD’s.

This one does not budge. Granted, this burner is bigger, but not huge. I actually like it. So, my biggest issue being the BD-DL is now a thing of the past. I often tell this burner I love it, while gently patting it, just in case.

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.

and when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t indicate anything is amiss. It simply refuses to do anything. About half the blueray disks I’ve tried in it, it reads fine. The other half of the disks, it does not acknowledge exist.

No error messages. This is even true for pristine “straight from the factory” disks. I could understand if the drive were defective, and errors were produced. or if the disk were defective in some way, and errors were produced.

but I’m not getting any feedback at all from the drive. Is there a problem with the drive? With the disks? With drivers? Is the operator at fault? Is it an unsupported media format? What about firmware? I can’t even tell if my firmware is up to date – the support pages don’t list this drive.

Looking for support options on the webpage for it from the manufacturer takes me away from the page for the drive to a “select your product” page that doesn’t include the drive I was just looking at.

I bought this when I built my latest pc as I bought a case with no option for a disk drive. Also neither mine nor my wife’s laptops have them anymore, which is fine so for the random times I needed a drive I decided to spring for one.

Right off the bat, I am not sure what all others have tried to hit issues with it. I have tried this drive across 5 machines now (granted they were all win10) with no issues at all, and no need for drivers.

Noise level wise it is a tab loud when it boots up initially, however it is no louder than any laptop drive I have ever used. It plays dvds and bd’s perfectly fine,and comes with a version of power DVD to allow you to actually play BDs and UHDs on your pc.

UHDs are rough to get going though, they are really dependant on your computers hardware if you will ever be able to get them going or not. I have seen some complaints about vibration, but I have not noticed anything abnormal.

It comes with rubber feet and sots fine on a desk or ontop of a pc tower. The connection is just a standard USB Micro cable. It does not need a cable with 2 USB ends for most usb ports that are able to provide modern power supply to USB peripherals.

While I cannot comment on performance on OSX or Linux right now, overall using it I have been happy with the performance. Ripping audio CDs with EAC has actually been faster than any previous drive I have used (however all previous ones were just standard DVD drives).

Would recomend this to anyone looking for a external drive for their laptop or tower drive.

If you are looking for an easy way to play consumer Blu-Ray movies through your computer, this is not it. There may be trustworthy software players (for purchase), but I was quite disappointed that no software or key database is supplied by the manufacturer.

There are many consumer BD/DVD/CD players in this price-range, which will play EVERY consumer disc made for those 3 formats, in the user’s region. I do not believe that the ability to WRITE BD/DVD/CD media makes up for no (built-in) way to PLAY consumer BD movies.

If, however, you do not mind a bit of a chore to get started. and occasional disappointment when a BD movie is not compatible with VLC. this is a very good option. It works with MOST (>90%; no BD+ movies work) of my BD movies on Linux.

with VLC + KeyDB. cfg + libbluray2. But, it works with only 68% of my BD movies on macOS. with VLC + KeyDB. cfg + other add-ons (cannot recall). I do not know the BD movie compatibility percentage on Windows.

Linux is my primary OS on PC. I only keep Windows installed for rare use cases (e. g. wireless display mirroring to devices not recognized by Linux or running native Windows applications).

Just received this. The description says “ASUS BW-16D1X-U supports Mac OS X and Windows without any installation that will be operated directly when plugging the USB in the notebook or PC. ” and then states “Simply plug this blu-ray writer drive and you’ll begin to enjoy watching movies, writing requisite forms of multimedia content to the discs, and much more.

” Nothing in the description says you need an external power source and it reads as if you just plug into computer and it will work. This is what I was expecting and am disappointed it does not work this way.

I looks like a nice sturdy unit and should be ok as long as you have easy access to an external power source.

I needed a CD/DVD/RB disk drive to to backup photos and files from my laptop. I liked that the Buffalo BRXL-16U3 has it own power supple, so that does not need power from the laptop. It was easy to setup and looks nice on the desk.

The only down side was that the CyberLink suite was two versions behind and had to buy the update to the new version of Power2Go. Also, Cyberlink has gone to a monthly fee for all, but the Power2Go software.

It was a good thing that I only needed the Power2Go software. Over all the drive is great!.

I wanted this player due to the huge backup capacity on one disc. Some of the new Bluray discs can hold 100 GB or more (although I could not find any above 100 GB). It is very easy to create a backup using the provided Cyberlink software for backup, playing discs, or any function this machine can do.

There are only two things I found that it can’t do (apparently). One is, it won’t play a 4K Bluray disc, only standard Bluray. The second is that it (apparently) won’t write to the new “M” discs, although I didn’t try it.

Those discs are the ones suitable for archiving because they are said to last many years without the risk of deterioration. They are heavy duty discs which apparently need a more powerful laser to record data on them.

I did use my Buffalo drive to save data to a 100 GB disk and it worked fine. I also used it to play standard Bluray discs, and that worked well also. The only other thing that is a bit annoying is that the software is from Cyberlink and they like hardware companies to ship their product down-rev.

That way, they can keep prompting you to upgrade the software for a price. Luckily, I just bought a new PC and the Bluray player Cyberlink software provided was nearly the latest available, but even that can be upgraded for more $$$$.

In other words, the software, not the hardware, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Other than that, I like it!!!!!.

If you are not burning M-Disc, you are burning temporary discs. Even the best purple dye discs have a lifetime of around 5-7 years. M-Disc has a 1000 year lifetime so the ability to burn them is essential.

(We use the white printable M-Discs and a Epson printer that can print on discs. ) The picture on Home Essentials Direct, shows a nice pleasant green LED indicator light. Sadly, they switched to a eye-piercing blue light.

Blue lights should always be avoided in this kind of application. Red or green is the way to go. As a retired electrical engineer I was curious to see inside. You can remove one screw but it would require a lot of force on the case to get it open.

I decided not to risk it. I don’t like designs that make it difficult to get inside the case. Should the optical drive over fail, it would be nice to be able to get inside and replace it. Regarding the optical mechanism inside, doing a system report on my 2019 Mac Pro shows the manufacturer to be “Buffalo”, not “Pioneer” (nothing wrong with Pioneer in my view).

I do not know if the firmware has been crippled by the Hollywood cartel or not. I am only burning M-Disc DVDs and Blu-rays, I have not tried anything of larger capacity. Some disc burning software is included.

If you are using a Mac, none of this is necessary. If the activity indicator LED was green and not blue, and the case were easier to open I would give a 5-star rating. Frankly, no one does optical enclosures correctly.

The OWC enclosure is excellent except it’s 1/4 of an inch too short to accommodate the longer Pioneer drives. I was hoping this Buffalo unit would be a replacement for the OWC enclosures we normally buy.

However, because of the difficulty in opening them up I can’t justify switching to Buffalo. Shockingly, the enclosure has no, On and Off switch for power! First time I’ve ever seen that. For the more casual home user, the Buffalo unit is not a bad choice.

With the shortcomings mentioned above, I will close with the fact that the unit does appear to work as advertised. The product is manufactured in Japan, not China.

Overall, my experience with this device has been a positive one. I especially like how LG bundles Blu-ray player software with the device so you don’t have to pay extra to make use of the bloody thing, something that has always bothered me.

I have yet to make use of the burning options but I probably won’t use that anyways, I bought this for playing movies, not for burning. Also, it can be loud at times, namely when installing or idling with a disk inside.

Luckily, when the disk spins up, the whine stops and become whisper quiet. So, when you are watching a movie, you will not be distracted by any excess noise from the drive unless you pause it for a while.

For the price you pay, it certainly cannot be beat. It’s not perfect, but it does come highly recommended by me, so take that for what it’s worth.

So the player itself is great, burns CDs no problem, plays Blu-Rays no problem, unfortunately the software from Cyberlink is uh. not great is a good way to put it. I had to reinstall it over itself to get it to actually work, but I don’t blame the player for that.

Giving it 4 stars because the software is part of the cost, and the software is meh. Player itself is high quality, solid and slim, have had no issues playing/reading discs of any kind, playback of Blu-Rays on my computer was crystal clear with no issues.

That’s pretty much it. If you’re looking for a portable/USB external Blu-Ray player that can also burn/play DVDs & CDs, this thing is pretty great quality and well worth the money.

I still collect / buy physical media, Bluray, DVD, Games but I sold my old work station about two years ago and upgraded. My old PC had an LG Bluray Drive in it of which was the perfect workhorse. I was planning on purchasing an external drive for my new build anyway since my new case doesn’t allow for a BD Drive to be mounted, plus I wanted my new build to have a clean aesthetic without the noticeable clunky BD Drive.

Read a lot of great reviews on this item, so I though why not jump at it, it’s slim and stealthy looking which is what I was looking for in an external drive and it also needed to be silent whilst running.

Packaging: Comes package really well inside it’s tiny box which has nothing more than a picture of the unit and a few manufacturer details printed on the outside, I’m glad manufacturers are finally moving away from the ugly plastic clam shells and are keeping things environmentally friendly with recyclable materials.

The drive was held snuggly by a couple of soft foam pads to prevent it from moving around during transit, inside the box has it’s double ended USB power / data cable, a CD with bundled software and a small instructional leaflet.

Aesthetics: The unit is typical of a stealth looking drive, you almost wont even notice it on your workstation because of it’s slim design and dark color theme. Powering and Data transfer: It is recommended to use both USB connectors as one utilizes a single USB port to feed a sufficient amount of power to run it and the other for data transfer, buyer beware, using only one USB port would cripple it’s performance and it may struggle to read or transfer data from your media disc especially Bluray disc’s that hold more information.

Installation and OS compatibility: The unit presented no issues with installation and was immediately detected upon plugging it into two free USB 3 ports on my Windows 11 PC, yes, this unit will run on a Windows 11 PC with the latest 22H2 update build version 22622.

601 installed. User awareness, be sure you have x2 USB (either USB 2 or USB 3) ports free like I previously mentioned, this requires x2 USB ports to run at it’s full potential. Use and performance: Ejection button is very responsive and the disc mounts securely into place, the tray slides in and out freely and locks securely into it’s closed position, the supplied software disc spun up almost immediately upon closure of the disc tray which presented a few typical clicks and whines as the disc spun up.

The unit presented no issues reading or playing back data, DVD’s and Bluray discs although I haven’t yet written or burned any media to disc (as I don’t have any blank disc’s) but I’ll try that out at a later time.

The drive is really quiet, I couldn’t hear it working which is a good thing, there was no heat detected coming off of the tiny unit and the USB cables provided must have been doing extremely well with feeding power to it as unit didn’t seem to fluctuate during playback of any media.

The bundled software included on the CD disc is Cyberlink Media Suit 15, I wont go into what apps were included as I most likely wont be using any of them since I have my own personal preferences already installed on my PC anyway.

Now for the downside which isn’t really a downside but just me being nitpicky. For those who have a huge work station and have their PC’s sitting under their desktop, you would need to have your PC close enough to manage a suitable or permanent spot for it to sit as the cables for this unit are not that long that they can be conveniently routed cleanly from USB ports at the rear of your PC, perhaps I would recommend that you’d use a couple of USB extension cables or a USB hub extension to have placement options.

Other than the short cable, I’m very happy with the unit as it will more than likely be used simply to backup my physical media library to my PC and nothing more. Would I recommend this unit? more than likely yes to those who are looking for a slim, quite external drive for either using with their desktop workstations or mobile laptops.

So this bluray player was being a little difficult to use because of the power it need from the usb outlet. It needs a stable 5 volts 2 amps in order for the bluray player to work so i had to use a samsung fast charger power brick from my note 9 connected to the included cable with the two USB type A connectors.

One of those usb type A plugs goes connected to your computer and the other needs to be used for power i recommend a external power adapter. Plug it in and see of it works, if you get the unit disconnecting and reconnecting then swap the usb type cables and that should do the trick.

Another issue i had with this player was the software. It was very confusing to use the correct one because instead of it coming with 1 software to simply play your bluray or dvd movies on your laptop or in my case a windows 10 PC it came with many that were completely useless for this unit.

I decided to return it because it was wasnt as easy yo use and i would occasionally get the unit to restart it self randomly and repeatedly even after fixing the power issue, i even had a bluray dist get stuck for about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to safely get the disc drive to open and once i finally did thats where i drew the line and packed it up and sent it back.

I had this unit for a while and reached out to LG about the issues and never got any support. I went woth LG because i own 2 of their OLED 4k tvs and love them and figured if they can make such an amazing TV then their bluray players must be built in the same quality manner.

I was wrong.

On unboxing I tried peeling back what I thought was electronic film on the case since it is riddled with air bubbles. I discovered that it wasn’t removable and is just a super crappy build. The tray that holds the disc feels like it could snap with little effort.

Then I realized how hard it was to hook up to my MacBook Pro, which I consider a major design flaw. I had to buy two USB adapters that were thin enough to connect on the same side since the provided cord is daisy chained with a very short second connection cable.

I was willing to look the other way on all this, but then it would only recognize discs some of the time. I tried multiple times with different discs under a number of conditions and it just doesn’t reliably recognize discs.

That is a deal-breaker and very frustrating! I also could register through LG website and was told to email LG my product info. I did this and never got a response. This is my first experience with LG and I definitely will steer clear in the future.

Big, chunky, black. what my wife calls a “man brick. ” This is not a slimline, delicate item, it has a large desktop footprint at 22x16cm and 5cm tall. It is however, a good solid design. Well constructed I have had zero problems using this and it has yet to fail on a burn – unlike other drives I’ve had in the past.

Operation is surprisingly quiet, I’m used to drives humming and whining, hissing and buzzing while in use. This one is much quieter than drives I’ve had in the past. It still makes a noise, but much less so.

The single front mounted button is firmly mounted with only a little play and the click when ejecting a disk is positive. The tray when ejecting is quite aggressive, I’m not entirely sure why it should be so, but it’s sufficient to push a 50 stack spindle out of the way (discovered by accident).

I’ve run cd, dvd and blu ray through this unit and it picks up write speeds without issue, allowing the software to work at optimum speeds. Something else that I’ve not had before with other writers.

I’ve previously always had to manually set the write speed. There are two LEDs on the case. One blue, to the rear of the casing indicating that when it is on. A smaller green LED under the drawer and next to the eject button flashes when the unit is operating.

The drive is nicely finished in a semi gloss black, with a slight curve to the top of the case and rounded corners. Cleaning is simple and without little edges and unnecessary decoration where dust gets caught.

I’ve never understood why manufacturers have to cut dust traps into their cases.

Buffalo BRXL-16U3-EU 16 x USB 3. 0 External Blu-ray Drive It is compatible with Mac OSX. I have tested it on an iMac Mid 2011 High Sierra. Connect the power supply and usb cable supplied. Nothing else to do.

Audio CD’s are played and /or down loaded to iTunes. Film DVD’s are played through the DVD Player. app. Burn a DVD by alt clicking the relevant file or folder and choose “Burn”. Application auto start set-up DVD’s start as expected.

If you require other features then additional software will be required. This is the reason the original spec does not mention Mac Compatibility, as the additional free software features are only for Windows supplied as.

exe files. Hence only 4 stars. For OSX I suggest looking at: 1. Wondershare DVD Creator 2. Aiseesoft DVD Creator for Mac I guess I’ll be looking for something soon as I’m very pleased with the purchase.

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.

This BU40N drive eventually worked with Windows 10 on a Dell M4700 laptop, but NOT imediately. Initially the drive would not play/read any CD, DVD or Blu-Ray disk. At that point in time I did not even try to burn anything.

I went to the LG site and downloaded and installed a Firmware upgrade for the optical drive. After trying and rebooting a couple of times, the BU40N drive was then able to play/read a CD, DVD and Blu-Ray disk.

I have still not tried to burn anything. Microsoft really screwed people by Windows 10 OSs failure to support optical drives on a laptop.

Fast, quiet and efficient. All the 3 things needed, when spending the best part of 80% working with CCTV , evidence. Personal purchase, but carried for working out and about. It compliments my Laptop, Hub and USB’s I carry when CCTV trawling, allowing me to burn evidential copies from USB, before returning to the office, as it is powered via the USB.

Excellent service – shipped quickly and packaged well. Exactly as I wanted. The product is great – super thin, very quiet, fast and does exactly what I needed. On the expensive side, but you get what you pay for and this is quality.

TranslateShow in original languageSchönes Design, läuft leise, schön flach. Tolles Produkt. Klein und sehr schnell wieder einsetzbar. Gute Verarbeitung. Blitzschneller Versand, weiter so. Die Bedienungsanleitung ist leicht verständlich Zuerst mal danke für die Gratis-Haftmarker.

Die kamen wie gerufen! Also kann ichs nur empfehlen und auch der Service von Böttcher war 1A.