14 DAY TRIAL // When Intel said that it would be postponing the mass production of USB 3.0-compatible hardware, many among both corporations and end-users were quite unhappy with the delay. The general discontent was somewhat alleviated, however, when ASUS released its USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s Motherboards, at which point hardware manufacturers had a basis for releasing various USB 3.0-supporting items, whether they were flash drives, media players, disk burners or even external hard drives.
This time around, after introducing the first USB 3.0 hard drives, Japanese company Buffalo revealed another USB 3.0-compatible product, the BR-X1216U3 Blu-ray disk burner. Similar to Pioneer's BDR-205, Buffalo's unit can achieve write speeds of up to 12x, although these speeds can only be achieved when running on USB 3.0.
The burner is, naturally, backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but the maximum speed at which the unit can write BR disks under these conditions is 7x, compared to Pioneer's unit, which doesn't need USB 3.0 to reach the same speed. Nevertheless, certified 12x BR disks are not even being mass produced yet, which means that the BR- X1216U3, like the BDR-205, may have come out a bit early.
Even if the 12x speed was achieved before, Buffalo's product is still the world's first Blu-ray burner to reach 12x while using the USB 3.0 interface. More specifically, the drive runs at 12x for BD-R SL/DL, at 2x for BD-RE SL/DL, at 16x for DVD-R/+R, at 8x for DVD-R/+R DL and DVD+RW, at 6x for DVD-RW, at 5x for DVD-RAM, at 40x for CD-R and at 24x for CD-RW. In addition, it includes the PowerDirector 8 HE, PowerProducer 5, PowerDVD 9 BD edition, Power2Go 6, PowerBackup 2 and InstantBurn 5 features developed by CyberLink.
The drive, measuring 164 (W) x 50 (H) x 281 (D) mm and weighing 1.8kg, has an estimated price of $480 and is expected to become available for purchase by next month.