ASUS BW-16D1HT - ultra-fast 16X Blu-ray burner with M-DISC support, black

Packaging is a little damaged, but not more damaged than something that's been sitting in your close. It's a little louder than my LG drive when reading but beggers can't be choosers nowadays. I'm buying 2 more as a backups for when my LG and Verbatim slim drive kick the dust. As right now I can recommend buying these used if you're looking to future proof your media collection. I'll update this review when I get the other 2 and see their condition.

This drive works flawlessly. Installation was very easy. I am using it to rip my DVD collection for Plex Media only, so I can only attest to that capability. FYI: I am using it with the external enclosure NexStar DX2 by Vantec, which was also incredibly easy to assemble and install; they go well together.This drive is also almost silent.It is also very fast when loading a disc.The "rip rate" is about 7.4 MB/sec (5.6x) for regular discs and 20.0 MB/sec (4.6x) for Blu-Ray; the rate starts slower but climbs as it copies. This is faster than the terrible USB external drive I was using and it does not cause my computer to shut down randomly and it actually reads Blu-Ray discs, unlike the (Blu-Ray) USB drive which was defective in several ways.It is more expensive than the USB drive, but well worth it.

I like it. The laser in my old dvd drive got weak and wasn't recording music on one brand of blank cdr discs but it would on another brand of blank cdr discs; And it wouldn't read some of my backup dvd's [It read some but not all]. This new drive reads and writes on everything perfectly and more quickly. At first I thought there was a problem with this drive and I almost sent it back; But when I opened the computer I noticed the SATA power-cable from the power-supply wasn't plugged into the back of the drive, only the SATA cable was; So the blue light would flash constantly but it would never open. I did plug both SATA cables into the back of the drive but I put black electric tape over the ends of the power supply cables that weren't connected to anything and when I pulled on some of those wires it must have unplugged the SATA power-cable from the back of the drive. Make sure both the power-cable from the power-supply and the SATA data cable that goes to the motherboard are plugged into the back of the drive before closing your computer case. I like this ASUS BW-16D1HT blu ray drive.

Firmware flashing works as of May 16th 2025 good drive quick rips

Works as expected. Fast data transfers. No major issues with the model I recieved. No software needed. Drivers works out of box on Linux Mint.For contexts, I ordered this disc drive as a replacement to a 2011 LG model, where suddenly the drive had issues with a door opening (jammed or broken). Barely used the drive after like 2016, but I do probably once a year now. After trying to get the drive working, I decided to go for this Asus model. Since using this one within 24 hours, I experienced a minor issue with the reads on a couple of discs, probably the reason why this was resold. I works for the most part, just seems some blu-ray r's and rw's takes longer to load or needs reloading. The discs are in nearly excellent condition. Also the Asus drive I recieved is not the same as shown in the description.I suppose the only thing I have to test now is, can it burn data on discs!?

Great Blu-ray Disc burner drive. You are able to flash firmware to make it able to play 4K discs - just do your research and note risks involved.

This drive is able to be flashed with a LibreDrive-compatible firmware, meaning you can back up your 4K UHD Blu-rays with something like MakeMKV for “offline” viewing and archival purposes. Unfortunately the one UHD disc I bought came with an infinitesimal radial scratch, making backing up impossible, but I plan to return it and test further. It worked flawlessly with the other included normal Blu-rays, though. $100 is nothing to scoff at, but for encoding nerds like me, getting the best source image you can is essential.

The Asus Blue-Ray burner reads and writes blue-ray disk dvd very well but it can't read blue-ray data disk and there is no software to do so.