Pioneer 6x BDR-XS07TS External Portable Magnesium Slim Slot Blu-ray Burner

I got this to replace a USB DVD drive, so I could watch Blu-ray discs on my laptop. Very happy with it. You do need some suitable software to play Blu-ray videos though - the free Leawo player is clunky and a bit ad-ridden but does the job, and VLC (with some tweaking) should also work but seems less reliable. I may invest in PowerDVD at some point.Though the case seems to be plastic, the metallised top feels robust and looks very smart, matching my Dell XPS-15 :-) I particularly like the fact the cable isn't integral, but plugs into a USB-C socket on the back.In use the drive feels fast and smooth, and is pretty quiet, though that can be controlled by the Pioneer Drive utility. It also managed to read some problem discs that my other drives couldn't, and ripped some CDs significantly faster (typically about 12x). Blu-rays were of course slower, about 4x.A few minor oddities or niggles, though not enough to drop a star.* An activity LED on the the front would have been nice for this price. Not strictly necessary I know, but practically every other drive I've used has had one, so I was surprised to find this didn't.* There's a power socket on the back, which is described in the manual as 5V 1.0A, but with no explanation of when it might be required, and no USB-to-jack power cable supplied. I presume you'd only need it if your USB port can't supply enough current via the USB-C connector. The drive works fine on my USB 3 laptop ports with just the supplied C to A cable (and also with my own C to C cable), but a clear explanation, and preferably a suitable cable, would have been helpful for anyone using a low-powered port.* As others mention, give that this has a USB-C socket, it's disappointing that a C to C cable isn't also supplied. My laptop has both A and C ports, so to avoid using up one of the two precious A ports I have to use an adaptor or my own C to C cable. C should be faster but I haven't tested this, as I imagine the drive speed would be limiting anyway.Some notes:* The manual says the physical eject button doesn't work on a Mac (I use Windows so this doesn't affect me)* Being a slot loader, there's no manual eject "paper-clip" hole. If necessary powering down and restarting should free up any drive lockup, but the manual suggests the Drive Utility (Pioneer's or Windows?) can be used for forced ejection. I know some people don't like slot-loaders, but I prefer it, and it's easier to use than a flimsy tray loader, on my cluttered desk. As long as you don't try odd-shaped discs, 8cm adaptors, or ones with dodgy sticky labels, you should be ok!* The box has a cryptic comment about PureRead 4+ which implies it won't work with USB-C only ports. It can be enabled in the Pioneer utility, but I haven't worked out exactly what it does, or how or whether it really works! [but see below]All in all , very happy with this drive, especially as it was on a deal and at a good sub-£100 priceUPDATE: I've been trying to understand how PureRead 4+ works. I gather it's essentially hardware error-correction built into the drive, that can be enabled with the Pioneer utility. Initially I came to think it was useless junk, because when enabled it didn't seem to prevent errors on bad disks, but also hid them from the ripping software (EAC or iTunes etc.), and showed red error blocks and "FATAL" status even perfect discs, and always showed a meaningless last transfer time of 158 hours or suchlike! It also seemed to cause a random fatal "unknown error" in iTunes during a rip. But I eventually discovered that this ONLY happens if you leave the Pioneer utility open while ripping - you have to use it to set PureRead (though only once, since the "+" version saves the setting to the drive), but then you MUST close the utility while ripping. Ok, if that's unavoidable fair enough, but a decent app should lock the drive or give a proper indication, not just go crazy!If you then reopen the utility after ripping, it will then correctly show the error status if any. The wizard "quality" option enables PureRead, but sets it to Master, which I think interpolates any missing data, so for archiving you probably want to change it to "Perfect", so it fails if there's an error and you can start polishing the disk with toothpaste and try again!

I love the appearance of this drive and it functions well (albeit a bit noisy at high speeds). But what lets it down is the unnecessarily flimsy top cover which bends as soon as you press a single finger on the top. This could have easily been made more rigid without having to resort to a more costly metal exterior. It's just that the quality and rigidity of the plastic that they chose to use was unduly cheap.I also don't like that this model is feature-limited in terms of the range of disc formats that it supports. But with supported formats, it works well.

I WAS WONDERING AT HAVING NO LOADING AND UNLOADING TRAY AS REVOLOUTOANARY. I JUST WENT FOR THE DEAREST BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE BEST. THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE. ONE HAS TO PAY EXTRA FOR SLOT LOADING. WELL IT IS WORTH IT BECAUSE THE EJECTION TAKES UP FAR LESS SPACE. JUST BE CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH THE RECORDING SURFACE WHEN PUTTING I AND TAKING OUT. I WONDERD ABOUT THAT NO TRAY AS TO HOW IT WOULD WORK. WELL IT WORKED FINE AND NO PROBLEMS SO VERY EASY TO USE. NICE AND SILENT BUT ONE CAN JUST HEAR IF IT IS RUNNING AND THAT IS IMPORTANT AS NO LIGHT IN FRONT. THE MAIN PROBLEM IS THE BURNING SOFTWARE AS PROBLEMS WITH THAT . I HAD TO PURCHASE AN ASUA CHEAP DRIVE TO GET CIBERLINK 8 SOFTWARE AS SOLD WITH THE DRIVE. THAT GOES BACK TO WINDOWS XP. THEY HAVE JUST UPDATED IT TO WINDOWS 11. IT IS AN OLD ONE BUT VERY EASY TO USE AND IT WORKED WELL. ONE CANNOT PURCHASE THAT SOFTWARE AND I THINK THEY OWN IT. THE PRICE OF BURNING SOFTWARE COSTS MORE THAN PURCHASING CYBERLINK 8 WITH THE DRIVE.

Successfully works with Leawo Professional Media 13 on MAC OS. One thing to note, I find you have to open Disk Utility and press the eject symbol twice on OSX to eject the disk. I do this for disks I own only as a means of backup, etc.

I wanted an external drive that I could use to rip Blu-ray disks. I use MakeMKV which recognised the drive immediately. On my first attempt to rip a disk, the drive was silent but slow. (You do really notice this if you are used an standard PC internal drive.) I checked to see if a firmware update was available to speed up the process, instead however I found on the Pioneer support site (just google the drive model number) an application called 'Pioneer BD Drive Utility'. This gave the option to speed up the the drive with the caveat that the drive would lose its silent operation. The speed nearly doubled, buts its noticeably louder. The good thing is during the process you can amend this speed over noise option without issue at any time. So if you are in no hurry, set it to silent and you won't even hear it hum, otherwise put some headphones on. (This is just for ripping disks, actual playback was very quiet.) I do not know much about disk encryption other then it seems to vary depending on the disk, but on average I found a 50GB Blu-ray took about 1 hr 25mins to rip in silent mode, and about 40-45 mins in 'fast-noisy' mode. The drive itself it well built and a good quality item. The negatives are no Blu-ray playback software comes with the drive, its limited to 5 region changes and then its locked (though ripping seems to make no difference to this in that it has not changed if I have ripped disk from other regions. - I have not however playbacked these from the disk.) Finally no mention of the 'Pioneer BD Drive Utility' was in the manual or on the box which seemed like an oversight.