Buffalo External Blu-ray Writer Has BDXL Support

Buffalo does tend to release something new at least once a month and, this time, its labs have put together a new optical disk drive for travelers or anyone else that owns a PC.

For people who like their disks capacious, Buffalo has created the BRXL-PCW6U2-BK.

This is a less than ordinary Blu-ray disk writer, as it has support for even the latest, high-capacity disks known as BDXL.

As an update, or reminder, BDXL is the newest format of Blu-ray that was invented.

Based on the principle of multiple layers, BDXL disks can reach capacities of 100 GB and even 128 GB.

Presumably, they will be useful in recording super high-resolution media and increase the storage limit of games for Sony PlayStation consoles, among other things.

The Buffalo BRXL-PCW6U2-BK can read both 3-layer and 4-layer disks and communicates with a personal computer over the USB 2.0 interface.

Of course, these capabilities comes in addition to the ability to read data from (and write data on) mostly every other optical disk media format out there.

CD-RW and CD-R disks, for example, are scribed at a maximum of 24x, while DVD-RAM are scribed at 5x.

Furthermore, DVD-R DL/+R DL/-RW are written at a maximum of 6x, while DVD-R/+R/+RW takes things even further, to 8x.

As for the BDXL disks themselves, they are written at 4x ('common' BD-R single-layer and dual-layer disks reach 6x).

Physically, the Buffalo BRXL-PCW6U2-BK weighs 340 grams, has two built-in USB cables (data transfer and power, respectively) and measures 145 x 19 x 153 mm (5.7 x 0.7 x 6 inches).

Japanese stores should begin listing it, this month (November 2011), in about a week in fact, for what essentially equals $200 ($145.88).

Go here for the product page (translated) or here for the actual, official announcement (also translated).