PioneerBDR-XD08UMB-S Pinnacle of The XD08 Series with a Matte-Black Body USB 3.2 Gen1 (USB Type-C) / 2.0 Slim Portable BD/DVD/CD Writer Features The Latest high-Grade Rubber Coating

I've never used a bluray player outside of a Playstation 3 or 4 before. I got this for my computer in combination with other software (FLV and plugins) to be able to watch my blurays after seeing Howls Moving Castle in bluray. The quality of most blurays is incredible, definitely check each individual bluray for the resolution and quality since they can differ greatly, but most of the time blurays are fantastic. I buy a lot of used blurays at thrift stores, and sometimes they don't work. That's not a problem of the player, but of the discs, so be aware that blurays can still malfunction.The quality is not comparable, digital downloaded movies can look quite fantastic, but there is a noticable difference in audio and video in a bluray. In anime, cartoons, and movies that have been rendered in 4k, the difference is absolutely incredible.This is a mildly expensive purchase for me, but I don't regret it at all. It has been an incredible tool for me and my family so far.

Love this disc drive, it works exceptionally well. I was able to watch some movies that didn't play as expected on other disc drives due to scratches on the disc. I also use it to back up data and it works so much faster than other disc drives. Lastly, since this is on an older version of firmware, i'm able to watch UHD discs without having to make any changes. Not sure if the newer firmware blocks UHD discs from playing, but the model that I bought was able to play UHD discs out of the box.

I'm not sure there's anything else to say, this drive is the pinnacle of optical disc technology for any modern PC.

I'm still having trouble getting it to play 4k movies, however. So I dinged it a star for that. The included software you have to download would NOT play any 4k movies I put in it.Regular bluray movies? No problems. DVDs? No sweat. CDs? Absolutely. And burning Blu-rays? STELLAR. I burned 11 Blu-ray movies so far, and only had 1 failure, which was my fault because I bumped the burner in mid-burn and it borked the burn process.So, public service announcement: make sure this is in a location that won't get bumped and won't be subject to vibration (like from loud speakers). Speaker bass, hitting the top of the desk, stuff like that is enough to crash a burn. So make sure you don't bump it and keep the music down low for a much better burning experience.Sure wish the CyberLink software would just...play 4k movies. It could be a bios setting and if it is, I'll stop by when I get it changed and tested and if it works after that, I'll update the 4 stars to 5. Beyond my 4k playing difficulty, this has been a top quality burner (which is really what I got it for to begin with). 4 stars, with a possible future upgrade to 5 if I can get 4k playback ironed out.

Works great on my 23' Mac Pro and my 23' Macbook Pro. All my BlueRay disks play perfectly.

If you're buying this thinking that you'll just plug it in and viola, your PC will play UHD blu rays, you need stop the purchase and think about this, because unless you have an Intel processor from gen 6 to 10 (14 is the current gen), and unless you are using the onboard graphics and not a graphics card like a RTX or Radeon, you will NOT be able to legally play ANY UHD blu rays.And, because the bios cannot be downgraded, you will not be able to flash your bios back to a version where these restrictions wouldn't matter. Basically, thanks to the march of time and a refusal on the blu ray consortium's part to actually do anything with the format that wasn't "sit back and do nothing so no one buys physical media any more" this is just a needless upcharge on the cheaper model that literally gives you no useful functionality the other, cheaper, model doesn't have.

I purchased and tried the product. It's compatible with Multi-layer BD-R XL discs and anything below that. Max speed for CD is 24x, DVD is 8x and for BD-R it's 6x, BD-R XL 4x. What sucks about this drive it's got a newer firmware 1.02 dated 12/2022 and that means you can't play 4K Ultra Blu Ray discs on your computer or back them up. Because of that I will return this Optical Drive.

Device is a Gem, excellent built quality, burning is fast and reliable, pioneer software utility is great!, mine came with 1.01 firmware which supports libredrive. No other external optical drive can compare to this!I used a bu40n that scratched many of my discs due to touching surface for even the smallest movement, with this there is no such thingDefinitely a top of the line device.