Mobile Computing News

Photo: Buffalo

While Blu-ray continues to gather momentum in home theatres, PC and laptop adoption has been haphazard, at best. Buffalo has a solution for this rather annoying problem with the Buffalo external blu-ray burner.

Performance

The included software package is the now-dated Power DVD 8, whereas Power DVD 10 is already included. Write speed is solid, with the standard USB setting giving a Blu-ray writing speed of 4-6, and the hardware’s included TurboUSB providing a stable write speed of 6x for BD-Rs – the most common Blu-ray disc format. The other writable Blu-ray disc formats the Buffalo external supports are BD-RE, BD-RE DL and BD-R DL, which have write speeds of 2x, 2x, and 4x respectively.

Aesthetics

The drive is sleek out of necessity, weighing in a manageable 320g and with dimensions of 136×18x142. It has a very high gloss finish that adds to the ‘wow factor’ when first removing it out of its case. About 10 minutes after first handling it, seeing the intense fingerprints and smudges you leave, you begin to have second thoughts. After a week of use, when the fine surface scratches begin appearing, you might start lamenting the Buffalo Blu-ray  burner’s unnecessary glossy finish.

The pros

From a ‘pros’ perspective, this is a very competent, capable Buffalo Blu-ray writer, with support for a wide range of disc types, both single and dual layer. The fact that it’s external and portable, meaning you can plug it up to any Windows PC, is a definite plus.

The cons

Strangely, the fact that it’s external and portable is also the biggest strike against the Buffalo external Blu-ray writer. External drives are more expensive and given Blu-ray already costs a premium, the rather steep price may be hard to swallow. Also, the strange design decision to give it an easy-to-scratch glossy finish when Buffalo knows it’s going to be lugged around is bizarre to us. Additionally, this external Blu-ray burner doesn’t support Mac, leaving out a growing segment of computer users.

The verdict

Outside of these two admittedly minor strikes against the Buffalo Blu-ray writer, it’s very difficult to not recommend this as a solution for those looking for a way to consume hi-definition films or playback discs used as storage on multiple computers. Buffalo have long made good Blu-ray drives and they are onto something here, and the hope is they can leverage this, improve on the device’s aesthetics and add Mac support to make this drive irresistible.