ASUS Powerful Blu-ray Drive with 16x Writing Speed and USB 3.0 for Both Mac/PC Optical Drive BW-16D1X-U

As of: 03/2024, the drive is fine. Once in a while it won't read a disc, and once the computer is restarted it'll work. Although that could potentially be the operating system, but on a Mac, that kinda seems unlikely. To update firmware, you need to be on a Windows machine. That's so 2000's. If you're a Mac user, find a friend with a windows computer.The drive door seems to rattle at times making you think it's the drive mechanism, but it's just its thin plastic door. And the gears for the door opening and closing gets a little noisy after about two months. I might try and put electronic grease on it later.For digitizing my DVD/CD library to a NAS... AWESOME! With MakeMKV these two are a awesome combination.The speed is great too. It blows those thin, cheap, push to close three times, drives we are all used to now. This one is a full automated tray (open & close) like they were when CD-rom drives first came out.The power button on the back is terrible; they tried to make it carved and angular like the design of the case, but that makes it hard to grasp and slide it on and off. Also, there's a HUGE blue LED (1.5") on the top that says "Ice On Fire." At night... IN YOUR FACE! They could have saved money by not having all that fancy designing elements. Looks very 80's inspired.All that said, for what I'm putting it through (constant ripping) the drive is worth it. For a once in a while drive... get something cheaper.

Used this drive to archive about 10 hours of family home movies (approximately 25.5GB) onto Blu-ray discs for Christmas gifts. The device performed exactly as needed with no issues. Setup was straightforward on Windows - I don't recall needing to download any special software to get it working.The build quality seems solid, and the drive operated quietly without any heating problems during the lengthy burn process. While I can't speak to specific write speeds, the burning process took around 4 hours for my large video project, which seemed reasonable.Any error messages or compatibility issues I encountered were related to my video editing software, not the drive itself. For my needs - creating a permanent archive of precious family memories - this drive did its job perfectly.Note that I only used it with Windows and USB 3.0, so I can't speak to Mac compatibility or USB 2.0 performance. But for anyone looking to archive large amounts of data or video onto Blu-ray, this drive delivers.

For my needs this drive has worked perfectly. I bought in 2019 for $100 new. Now in 2025 same drive same specs 4 years of Bidenflation cost $179!!!!!!! My old one is wearing out but paying $179 for at most $120 Blu-ray drive is insane. Time to cut prices 4 years of communism is out the door make Blu-ray drives great again.

The Good:- Excellent read/write speed- Sized well for a larger desk- Seems reliable- Plug and play. No additional software needed to install for use (at least on Windows 10)The Not So Good:- Flimsy. The build quality is something to be desired. Any disc seems loose in the tray. The tray itself seems to rattle when ejecting- The supplied USB cable is short- The Eject button is not clearly labeled, just a tiny eject symbol on the side and, at least on my unit, it takes a fair bit of force to actually push it. I usually rely on my application to actually eject and insert discs.- The on/off switch on the back is a little awkward, but I usually turn it off when I'm standing up and can reach around the back of my desk.

I backup all of my Blu-ray movies to a Synology NAS, and then stream them to Raspberry Pi units running OSMC. My old external BR drive went kaput recently so I decided on this one, primarily because I don't care about portability as much, but I still want something I can move out of sight, since I switched to a mini PC (so, no tower for an internal drive, and the PC is also hidden from view in my office for a clean and clutter-free aesthetic).To test it, I ripped three discs - 1). Synchronicity on Blu-ray, 2) The Adjustment Bureau on Blu-ray, and 3). Jethro Tull "Heavy Horses" on DVD-A.Being used to ripping times for a Blu-ray that would read at 2.2x speeds with my old USB 2.0 drive, most Blu-ray movies would take about an hour to rip, and would lay down the data at about 5 MB/second. With ripping Synchronicity, I was surprised as this drive started up with the roar of a jet engine and then got busy, gaining speed the entire project, and ripped the movie from the disc in 9:23! So, as a weighted average, almost 7x faster than using my older USB 2.0 drive. I was impressed.The Adjustment Bureau is a different encode and a slightly longer movie than Synchronicity, and it did not get ripping as fast, but still much faster than my old drive could, and completed the rip in 21:19, or about 3x faster than before. Still impressive.The last test was performed on a DVD-A (a format that is now mostly defunct), on the lossless stereo PCM layer of Jethro Tull's latest remix release of their 1978 album "Heavy Horses." For those interested, ripping stereo PCM lossless audio in 24-bit/96kHz to FLAC is a long, arduous job for any computer, and requires more processing and time than even ripping a 1080p movie (both audio and video). I'm an audiophile with great audio equipment, so I go for the highest resolutions I can The music most people stream is maybe one tenth the quality and information of these rips, but with a superior audio setup, make all the difference. The album is about one hour long with a few bonus tracks, and normally would take about 45 minutes or 1.25x with my old drive. This drive however got the job done in 20:33 with zero corrections, jitters, etc. Flawless.So basically I'm super pleased. For an external drive this thing is BIG, but that doesn't bother me, as I will be putting it away in a closet when not in use.Yes, the power switch is in an odd location on the back but who cares, it works tremendously.I'll be ripping a few normal audio CDs this weekend (to FLAC), and I suspect I will get superior read speeds as well.In terms of burning discs, I will update the review after I have had the chance to test that aspect. I had to write this prematurely because of how impressed I was with such fast read times for ripping video and audio codecs to a NAS from an "external" drive.A+ so far! Buy it.