Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I ordered this Blu-ray burner to replace a LG burner which is picky with its food. Did not regret it. This is one of the few high-end external Blu-ray burners that supports true USB 3.0 and BD-R QL. Some people might say the speed of the optical drives doesn't even reach the limit of USB 2.0, so having USB 3.0 is pointless. This is not entirely true. The Blu-ray burner running at its full speed of 6x would result in a data rate of 205Mbps, which is already 43% of available bandwidth. This doesn't even count the framing and protocol overhead, and other devices share the same bus. The bandwidth budget is actually pretty tight. There are another 2 major advantages of USB 3.0. One is that USB 3.0 supplies more juice over its power lines, so you don't need a external 5V power adapter or to waste an extra USB connector. Also USB 3.0 supports a larger packet size than USB 2.0, which means less CPU power is wasted on data transferring. This optical drive supports standard USB Mass Storage protocol with MMC-5 SCSI command set. Any modern operating system should support it without a third-party driver. It is also bundled with PowerDVD, so you won't need to spend more money for video player software. It also comes with an optional utility that can be downloaded from the official website: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Computer/Computer+Drives/BDR-XD05B?tab=firmware The utility can be used to adjust its internal error recovery and acoustic management settings, which is extremely useful for backing up discs. The error recovery feature can be disabled (a.k.a. Pure Read) when you backup an audio CD, so read errors won't be silently covered up. This drive have acoustic management (a.k.a. Auto Quiet) on by default. When a video disc is detected, it automatically limits read speed to 2x. Be sure to disable it to get the full speed when making a backup. The case is made of plastic with a metal base. It actually feels sturdy. If I have to make one complaint, that would be there is no cable compartment. I think it is necessary evil to keep the size small.