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

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.

Good optical drive. About the size of a Harry Potter book. The on switch in the back was confusing because you have to slide it left/right instead of flicking a switch or pressing a button. Eject button is a little weird, too. It's not obvious and you have to press it towards the top of the button for it to register.That said, it reads DVDs and Blue-Rays (not 4k UHD). Works well with third party software for digitally archiving your personal physical media collection as advertised. I have not burned a disk yet and probably won't because that's not why I bought this. I can't compare the read/write speed to other drives because this is the first I've had, but it feels fast. There have been a small handful of DVDs where it couldn't recognize it, but I can't say that's not because the media is old.

A few things you should know: the power button is on the rear and that is annoying. This uses an AC adapter it is not USB powered. The eject button is not well designed but it does work, you have to hit it just right. The blue light on the front is very bright and large. It is the fastest optical drive I have ever used it initializes the disk quickly and the seek time is the fastest I have ever seen. That being said if you need a great optical drive this fits the bill however it could definitely use improved ergonomics, and the giant blue light on the front should be replaced with a small LED.

I was a little nervous after some of the reviews talking about the button on front and the switch in back. I dont get it, the switch on the back is easy to push on and off and the button on the front works just fine as well. Via Itunes I tested this against an LG BP50NB40 slim. I ripped a rather Large Norah Jones CD (forgot which one it was). The LG took 3 minutes 19 secs. The Asus took 2 minutes 7 seconds. The extra speed is making the cd ripping process much less painful. Could see the extra speed show up when ripping a dvd via MakeMKV as well. I also like that that opening it is electronic. After the CD finishes in Itunes, I just click the eject icon with my mouse, pop in a new CD and hit the front button on the Asus and off it goes. Super happy with the purchase. On a side note, and I will need to see if there is a way around it. I planned on using one with MakeMKV (since you can select which blu ray device to use) to rip my movies for plex, and then at the same time use Itunes and the Asus to rip CDs. Seems Itunes wont recognize the Asus while Make MKV is ripping a movie. Odd.

When buying this product, I was really concerned how compatible with MacOS. Thankfully I can say that you can do anything you'd want to do with this product except watch Blu Ray movies, in which you'd need to buy third party software to watch them. But I did not buy this product to watch BluRay movies.This product can successfully burn files on any kind of Blu Ray media, you can rip CDs and watch DVDs as well. MacOS has a built in DVD player, but not a built in Blu Ray player. This product also can write media on rewritable BluRay discs, and you can rewrite those Blu Ray discs at any time on MacOS.I have not had any errors after burning files on Blu Ray discs, both with 100GB M-Discs and 25GB Rewritable Blu Ray discs. Using this product is truly plug and play. I did not have to install additional software in order to start using it. Given I've gotten this "like new" refurbished product for $60 from Computer Headquarters INC with all the accessories and manuals, and the machine does everything I need it to do at an amazing price!Just to note, when the CD, DVD or Blu Ray is in the drive on Mac OS, you must eject it from the computer rather than pressing the eject button on the drive. But doesn't diminish the value of the drive whatsoever in my eyes. If you're looking for a Blu Ray drive for your Mac OS to burn files and also want to use it for Audio CDs and DVDs, I can wholly recommend this!