Customer Ratings & Reviews

Very happy with this burner. Totally compatible with my new iMac. Has secondary USB plug attached. But, if you use it with only the single USB 3.0 plug, it works just fine. Free Mac Blue-ray player software is available online that lets you play your Blue-ray discs on your iMac with this drive. Silver color compliments iMac very well. Sits below the screen and there's plenty of room to load discs in an out. Nothing but positives so far.

Overall, this is a great device. It's quiet, fast, and reads DVD's and Blu-ray discs perfectly. There's only two reasons I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5: 1. The cord is way too short. Seriously, a 12" cord is almost useless. I bought this for my desktop computer - luckily, I literally keep my PC on top of my desk, and the cord is barely long enough to reach from the USB port to the desk. 2. The drive requires TWO USB ports to work properly - one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0. Computers these days are short on USB ports the way it is, and I was planning to use this as a semi-permanent addition to my computer. However, since it hogs two USB ports, I'll have to disconnect it occasionally as I need to use other accessories. Other than that, I've had no problems with it whatsoever. I use it to rip DVD's and Blu-ray discs to my hard drive, I've got almost 20 hours straight of continuous use at full speed out of it so far and it hasn't skipped a beat. For those who rated this drive 1 star because software isn't included - it says on the box that software isn't included, don't blame the drive because you didn't read the package. This is an excellent Blu-ray/DVD drive, but finding software to play Blu-ray movies is your responsibility -- not Pioneer's.

The Pioneer BluRay disc burner is easy to use, compact enough to carry in my backpack, and burns discs perfectly, every time. It’s fast, works well with my MacBook Pro, and with my Toast Titanium software. If you need a BR burner & player for your Mac computer, or just the smallest configuration for portability, this Pioneer drive is an easy choice to make. Great price point, too!

An excellent optical drive, portable and easy to use with both Mac and PC. Reads old discs that I thought were shot. Does vibrate a bit at high speed.

So far, this unit has played back DVDs very well. On an iMac, I downloaded a few free BluRay players and finally settled on software from Leawo which works well without any watermarks. Have not burned discs yet, but believe that won't be an issue after reading other reviews. I would have given this 5 stars, but it is quite loud during operation. Also, obtaining the proper driver was initially a headache since the Pioneer site would not let me download on the first 2 tries; 3rd time was a charm. Another issue is the bulky micro-USB connector at the back of the unit. However, swapping it with a cable from an external HDD allows it to fit nicely on the iMac's pedestal without hanging over, taking up desk space. (an L-shaped OEM connector would have been nice) Overall, it's working well and does what it is supposed to.

Pioneer has always been a Trusted Company for me. Their products work properly and last longer than others I have tried. This external Blu Ray Burner is Full Featured, Fast, and Quiet, as well as easy to use. I have successfully burned several Blu Ray home videos in the last 4 months since I purchased this product. I just plugged it into first USB I seen, the computer I built recognized it, and went into Nero to organize my videos to burn. No wasted disks. Burned the first couple Blu Rays disks by mistake on USB 2.0 taking almost 2 hours from setup in Nero to finish burning of 2 hours of home video. Moving the Pioneer Burner to a known USB 3.0 cut the burn process almost in half to just over an hour. I built a gaming system with a 4ghz+ i7 processor, 32gb gaming RAM, expensive high end video card etc. so times may vary for you. The only negative is it has a very short cable to connect to your system. I have not tested the triple or quad layer Blu Rays disks yet, but the single and double layers work great in this burner, if I can I will update when I test them. Hope this helps someone.

I do a lot of DVD and BluRay ripping, especially for my kids, which USED to be easy... until I upgraded to the really awesome, but no-drive-no-ports Macbook Pro. What to do, what to do? So I bought this drive. It's small, it's fast, it's simple, it's stylish-- and so far, so good in terms of ripping-- it can rip an entire BluRay into an MKV in about 25 minutes. It also ripped in an ULTRA scratched CD-R with visible defects without issue, as well. My only negative would be, it's tiny and light, so that also makes it a little bit flimsy. But, what were you expecting? It's a portable external drive, so, if at all possible, don't drop, kick, or step on it-- easy. Do what I do and make your life simple-- use this with a USB 3.0 port. If you do, you save yourself a USB jack and it's totally self-powered. Otherwise, you're going to need to plug in both (this doesn't come with an AC adapter) and that's a PITA.

I got this as a Xmas gift. It is easy to install and use. YOu can play BluRay, CD, MP3 and burn any type of disc. It is really quick and I don't find this noise as other people said. BTW I use this on a Mac, so full support on MacOS. I recommend this product.

Needed a burner for my kid's class project and this this came in at just the price. Reviews did not lie. It works perfectly right out of the box. I had no problems. Only needed DVD burning capability but this offers BluRay as well which made it a no brainer.

If you understand what you're getting with this drive, it's a great piece of hardware. Powered via USB (it comes with a Y-cable to plug into two USB ports in case you have lower power ports - if they're higher power output, it can work with one), this drive is quiet fast ripping CDs, reading DVDs and reading blu-rays (I haven't tried the burning features yet), That, however, is the key portion - it's a great piece of HARDWARE. While there is widely available software to play CDs, DVDs and write files to disc, there is no freely available (that I can find at least), software to play blu-rays directly from disc. If you have the software that does play Blu-rays (perhaps PowerDVD or such), it works great. If not, no blu-rays for you. I knew this going in and was quite happy with the drive I received. With that caveat, it's a great external drive and highly recommended.

Got this for our new Dell ultra cool super slim flip back laptop tablet. More and more of these are coming with no DVD as an option. Only needing it to maybe load software and watch a movie made sense. The only other option I found was an LG, after a bad experience with LG's service department on a home blu-ray player that was not an option. Now I couldnt find much info on compatability with windows as this is comparable with Apple products and marketed toward apple but Pioneer's website said compatible with other OS systems including windows and it also said that on the box so got it. With that said, you won't find it in the regular portable DVD players at Best Buy but where the Apple products are. It installed on windows 8.1 easily, was identified by windows hardware manager as a Pioneer and worked flawlessly. Now it really has a small light sized footprint. The loading is not motorized but a flip lid. While not glamorous it won't ever give you problems with loading mechanisms breaking! It also burn's Blu-ray Dvd's. Glad I got it!

I recently purchased a top of the line laptop that had no optical drive so I made this purchase to go with it. In many ways this is a much better way to go as there is less weight, the drive is easily replaceable, it is less expensive than built in Blu-ray (not an option for me anyway on my laptop). The big trend is to move away from optical drives but Blu-ray is a fantastic backup medium because of the capacity so I was glad I found this drive. It wont get used a lot, perhaps the reason for the trend. I have used it a couple of times to do a backup (the laptop has a critical function so I needed a couple of backups) and I used this drive to store that backup. It was quite fast, in fact it exceeded my expectations. Reliability. I have not had it long enough but I do trust Pioneer to make a great product. It will be put away most of the time so I expect it will not take any bumps or rough handling. Another advantage of an external drive. So I expect it to last a long time. Price value. I know even today there are laptops that have the option of adding optical, usually not too expensive for DVD-R but Blu-ray can be quite expensive. This drive was not expensive so it makes a way more affordable option. I would definitely recommend this product and I would make this purchase again.

I've purchased this Bluray drive mostly to do backups of DVD and Bluray movies that I own. I've found that my original discs sometimes can fail, I've lost some of those moving from one place to another, formats and regions incompatibility, so a digital copy is actually more convenient and easier to be played on AppleTV. For this purpose the drive worked fine, faster than expected. It doesn't come with any kind of software and considering the price it should provide it, but I was able to get freeware/shareware apps for Mac OS that were up to the task. It would have been good to have some software like a Toast light version, at least to use the drive to burn some bluray backups.

The drive works exceptionally well with my Samsung ATIV Book 8 using Nero 2014 programs (Nero Video, Nero Burning ROM, etc.). Pros: - Very fast with USB 3.0 connection. - Quiet and cool operation - Connects quickly and easily to Windows 8.1 without user interaction - Separate USB 3.0 connection cord easier and more convenient than attached cord - Top load requires less desk space - Compact size consumes minimal space in a laptop bag, a precious commodity for a traveling businessman - Light weight and durable Cons: - No storage bag for unit and cord to protect the unit from damage and keep unit and cord together in laptop/travel bag. The one con I listed isn't enough of an issue to mark it down from five stars. This is an excellent device for those who travel and need a convenient, compact drive. I highly recommend it.

I bought this drive knowing it was a bit loud but purchased anyhow b/c every site I read said it was the best slim drive out there! I was also under the impression that it would read the new 4K blu-ray movies since it supports quad-layer blu-rays. I have one 4K movie and it kicks it out every time as it cannot read the disk. It is also VERY LOUD! I wish now I would have opted for a newer, quieter drive even if it's not as fast. I would still recommend this drive... but I would also recommend the Samsung SE-506CB as it was my next choice.

It's was cheaper than most brands I looked at, but it's compact, dependable, and reliable. it was a great buy for me, and I haven't had no problems with it. easy plug *& Play which I love. :-)

My internal disk drive on my computer is very troublesome and does not work overly well, so when I was faced with the possibility of needing a Bluray disk drive I went searching. I had to be able to pick it up in-store that day, so I was a little more limited in my choices. I found this and decided to try it. I have not tried burning a bluray yet, but in burning the batch of 30 DVDs I had to burn at the time, it worked very well, without any problems like I would have had with my internal drive. I would have preferred spending a bit less on a disk drive that I did, but for the money I spent on it, I have been very pleased with its performance.

Good: This drive is outstanding for ripping movies and creating disks. The fact it's USB 3.0 makes it comparable to laptop internal drive speeds. Bad: No software for Blu-ray playback included. To get the best performance, there's a drive controller software only obtainable from Pioneer's website. If the intent of purchasing this is to play Blu-ray movies, other externals would probably be better. If the intent is to use the external with software already installed or data transfer, this is a great drive.

Drive is quiet and powerful. Easy to install. Need no driver with Windows 10. Now, I can burn all my videos with ease and my Blu-ray discs play smooth

I purchased the Pioneer External Blu-ray Disc drive for my iMac which has no CD/DVD drive. The best thing about this drive is that the top comes up for inserting and ejecting a disc. The other drives that you slide the disc in tend to 'catch' and will not eject as easily. It is a little loud when downloading or saving files, but playing a movie or music disc, it has a smoother sound in the background which you tend not to notice unless you're listening for it. It's great that is is so small and you can easily stash it nearby the PC.