14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to portable devices, weight plays a big part in things, not enough to qualify as a deal maker or breaker perhaps, but enough to be taken into account by customers when browsing. Pioneer knows this, and the latest optical drive it made reflects that awareness.
The new product that Pioneer put together is called BDR-XD05J and is a Blu-ray disk writer with a weight of 230 grams / half a pound.
That's pretty much the same weight as a 6-inch smartphone, despite the drive being much larger than one of those things.
Specifically, the portable ODD measures 133 x 133 x 14.8 mm / 5.23 x 5.23 x 0.58 inches. Just enough to fit disks of all sizes.
The fact that it is partially hollow inside helps keep things light, unlike for smartphones that need to cram a lot of hardware in a much smaller footprint.
That said, the Pioneer BDR-XD05J can write both single-layer and double-layer BD-R discs as speed of up to 6X, while triple-layer and quad-layer ones reach 4X.
It might seem slow, but that's no surprise. Besides, a slower speed is not such a big cost if it lets you scribe data on discs of 100 or 128 GB.
Moving on, BD-RE discs can be written at up to 2X speed, while DVDs can go as fast as 8X.
Nonetheless, it's CDs (compact discs) of 600 – 800 MB that go fastest, at up to 24X. Not that they're used much anymore.
All in all, the speeds are pretty low compared to what standard, in-system SATA Blu-ray writers can manage, but in line with the general expectations for portable versions. Besides, if not for the USB 3.0 interface, the writing wouldn't go even that fast.
To sweeten the deal, Pioneer bundles the BDR-XD05J with a suite of disc authoring/playback software from Cyberlink.