USB 3.0 and Type-C External Bluray Drive, External Bluray Burner and External Blueray/DVD Drive for PC, Blu Ray Disc Reader Compatible with Windows XP/7/8/10, Laptop, Desktop, MacOS for MacBook

I edited my previous review several times but for some reason the edits did not ‘take’. Thus I deleted the old review, collected additional information and now post this replacement. I first bought one of these drives in November 2022. It worked great on an iMac that was, at the time, 10 years old. I imported hundreds of CDs, DVDs and blue-ray disks. It had problems with a few DVDs, but so did every other drive I tried them in. I got a second identical drive in March 2024, just in case of problems, but never needed to use it. I got a new iMac in July 2025 and the first thing I found out was that the second drive did not work when plugged into that iMac’s I/O ports. They are specified as Thunderbolt-4, and supposed to be compatible with USB-C. The first drive just worked when plugged into the same port. Obviously, the second drive was at fault, right? I even swapped the USB cables and interface PCBs inside the drives and the problem stayed with the same drive. I had to plug in a USB-C to USB-A adapter/hub and use the USB-A branch of the drive’s 2-headed cable. That worked, mostly, but not what I would call WELL. Often took multiple tries to load a disk, sometimes lost access to the disk, and was slower than the 2022 drive. The drive was the only device plugged into that hub. So, I got another drive in September 2025. That one also would only work through the USB-A connector. I used it to import 3 blue-ray disks, but when I tried CDs it could not read them. It loaded CDs, with difficulty; after multiple tries they attached to the file system and appeared on the desktop, but the drive could not read data from them. It could not play music, import tracks, or even copy raw data. After failing to read a CD, the drive locked up hard. It had to be unplugged/replugged just to eject the CD it could not read. I tried 4 CDs, they all worked in the first 2 drives, but #3 could not read any of them. Amazon replaced it with another drive that had the exact same failure. So I bought a different brand drive, which turned out to have essentially the same optical drive inside. It also had exactly the same problems. All of that was mighty frustrating. Why was every drive I bought a piece of crap? The first drive still works but it won’t last forever. I posted bad reviews of both drives. Then I began to wonder if it was a power issue. Maybe the newer drives drew more current and the port didn’t like it? I rigged up a power-only USB-A cable and tried plugging that into a second port with the USB-C to USB-A hub. No dice. Sometimes the computer didn’t see the drive, sometimes it exhibited the same old failures. So, I bought a Sabrent externally powered USB-3 hub, to avoid any more problems with cheap no-name Chinesium products. And that seems to have fixed the problem. The drive bought in 2024 now works with the USB-C connector and can read CDs, DVDs and blue-ray disks without issues. I used Mac diagnostics to check the USB bus. It showed the port, the USB-3 hub, a second USB 2.1 hub, then the drive. Both branches of the 2-headed cable are connected to the drive through a USB 2.1 hub inside the case. Bandwidth is limited to USB-2 speed. Not that bad a limitation, though; it’s still 5X faster than the optical drive can stream data. It would appear that the I/O ports on current-model iMacs are not properly compatible with current-model USB optical drives. The older drive works fine, which led me to conclude that the newer drives were entirely at fault. Instead, it was an interactive failure between the computer and the drives. Using an external USB-C hub that supplied more power made them work. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to complain to Apple about this issue.

I'm extremely unhappy with my purchase of this drive. The build quality is quite flimsy, and it should be a red flag to any potential buyers that the USB cable is hard wired to the device, it's not detachable or replaceable. Adding to this questionable design choice is the fact that in order to get the drive to lie flat on a desk, you have to bend the USB cable sharply to get it to fit into a little recess that's been cut out of the frame. Pretty brutal treatment for a cable you can't replace. I suppose I could live with these things since I don't have a lot of physical media these days and this isn't a device I expected to be using often, but the biggest problem is the drive's performance. The few times it worked, everything was fine. No read errors, playback was great... but that's when it worked. Most of the time, the drive seemed to be unaware that a disc had been inserted. It would briefly spin up, spin down, spin up again, spin down, or worse, it would just do nothing. Sometimes it would read the disc upon insertion, but playback or ripping would immediately fail with a "no disc inserted" error. Strangely, another problem was that even though the drive behaved as though no disc had been inserted, it would also refuse to unmount the disc and open the drive bay, whether triggered via software or the physical eject button on the drive. I can't tell you the number of times I had to paperclip this thing to retrieve a disc from the drive. Sometimes I could get the drive to behave by dropping a heavy book on the desk right next to it--the drive seemed to "wake up" and read the disc with no problems after that. But I'm not spending $90 on something where you have to "jiggle the wires" to get it to work properly. That's just pathetic. Given the number of similar complaints I've read about this thing, I have no confidence that a replacement unit will perform any better. Any company that lets this many defective units off the production line isn't getting my money. If you're feeling lucky and want to gamble that maybe you'll receive one of the good ones, then go for it--it's a good price point, and other people seem happy with theirs--but I'd advise you to keep looking.

Very disappointed, it doesn’t work on a Mac. I tried various player software (since it doesn’t come with any) and none of them worked

Fast delivery, working well, burned Bluray disks with decent speed. connection cable is attached with it which folds nicely and stored underneath the drive and 1 extra connection cable give. Only thing is it I didn't see the light as shown in pic.

It works. It is a good buy.

It’s not working with my Mac so I returned it 2 Weeks ago, but I didn’t get my money back?

no software installation cd with the device and with the high cost i have not been able to justify this purchase yet. hope to get back after i succcessfully burn my first blue ray data disc