14 DAY TRIAL // Not all Apple Mac systems and laptops have optical disk drives, and Apple isn't really in the business of selling adjoining products, which means that other IT players can fill in the void.
Pioneer is taking advantage of this and is releasing the BDR-XU02JM, a Blu-ray drive with a stand.
It measures 133 x 133 x 12 mm / 5.23 x 5.23 x 0.47 inches and weighs 245 grams / 0.54 pounds. It is so thin thanks to the slot-in mechanism.
It can read all sorts of disks, and even write them. BD-R are scribed at 6X, triple- and quadruple-layer ones at 4X, BD-R (LtH) at 6X, single-, double-, and triple-layer BD-RE discs at 2X, DVDs at 8X, and CDs at 24X.
For a USB 2.0-connected item with 4 MB cache memory, those speeds are quite decent.
Sales will begin later this month (March 2013) in Japan, for an unknown price.