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Kevin Purdy
Kimber Streams

After researching more than 70 optical drives across four years, testing more than a dozen, and surveying more than 300 readers, we’ve found that the LG GP65NB60 is the best USB DVD drive and the Pioneer BDR-XD05B is the best external Blu-ray drive—if you need an optical drive at all. A Blu-ray drive can also rip, burn, and play DVDs and CDs, so buy one if you think you’ll ever deal with Blu-ray discs. But if not, you should stick with a DVD drive, because they're much cheaper.

It is compatible with Macbook,Macbook air, Macbook Pro, iMac or Mac mini via a single USB cable to help read DVD/CD and write to CD-R and DVD-R discs. With this portable disc drive for Mac 2017, you can play DVDs, rip discs, burn home movies to DVD, extract music from CD etc. It's the Samsung SE-218CB/RSBS USB Ultra Portable External DVD Writer, and it's the best external DVD drive for Mac and Windows. Why is it the best? Well it's affordable, portable, recordable,. Currently, the best usb dvd drive is the Pioneer BDR-XD05B. Wiki researchers have been writing reviews of the latest external dvd drives since 2016. Best Storage Devices for 2018. Our editors hand-picked these products based on our tests and reviews. If you use our links to buy, we may get a commission.

Our pick

LG GP65NB60

This model reads and writes DVDs at the same speeds as most external optical drives, and it’s inexpensive, quiet, and reasonably sturdy.

Buying Options

May be out of stock

*At the time of publishing, the price was $27.

The LG GP65NB60 (in black; LG also sells gold, silver, and white versions) is smaller and lighter than other portable DVD drives, and it operates at about the same speed. This sleek black rectangle easily fits inside a bag or drawer, and it draws power from an included Mini-USB cable. Most important, it’s available at major retailers.

Our pick

Pioneer BDR-XD05B

The smallest, lightest portable optical drive we tested; it’s one of the fastest, too. It has a convenient clamshell design and a long USB 3.0 Y-cable, but it can get loud.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.

If you need an external optical drive that can handle Blu-rays as well as DVDs, get the Pioneer BDR-XD05B (or the silver BDR-XD05S, which is identical in function). In our tests, this model was the fastest at burning and ripping DVDs. It’s also the lightest and most compact Blu-ray drive we tested, and it comes with a USB 3.0 Y-cable, which is handy for older computers that can’t power the drive from one port. However, we found this Pioneer model slower to rip Blu-rays than competing drives, and a bit noisier.

Runner-up

LG SP80NB80

Burns and rips at the same speeds as our top pick, and uses a more universal Micro-USB cable. But it’s sold at fewer stores, and shipping costs more.

Buying Options

If the GP65NB60 (or any of its color variants) is unavailable, we recommend the LG SP80NB80 because it is just as quiet, and it rips and burns DVDs at about the same speed. Roughly the same size as our top pick, the SP80NB80 has a matte case that shows fewer fingerprints. It also connects via Micro-USB, a cable type that’s a bit easier to find and replace than Mini-USB. However, this drive costs significantly more than our pick when not on sale. Depending on the price, you might also have to pay for shipping.

Runner-up

LG WP50NB40

For about the same price as our top Blu-ray pick, this LG model is even faster on Blu-ray tasks, though slower on DVD burns.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.

If you have a big Blu-ray collection to digitize and only rarely use DVDs, or if our Pioneer Blu-ray pick spikes in price, get the LG WP50NB40 instead. Compared with our top Blu-ray pick, it’s about 30 percent faster at ripping Blu-ray discs—which comes out to around 15 minutes per disc—and slightly faster burning them, for about the same price. But if Blu-rays are more of an occasional need for you, and you mostly use DVDs, our top pick is a better choice. The LG WP50NB40 is also louder, and a bit larger and heavier, than the Pioneer drive.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

LG GP65NB60

This model reads and writes DVDs at the same speeds as most external optical drives, and it’s inexpensive, quiet, and reasonably sturdy.

Buying Options

May be out of stock Best player for mac 2018.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $27.

Our pick

Pioneer BDR-XD05B

The smallest, lightest portable optical drive we tested; it’s one of the fastest, too. It has a convenient clamshell design and a long USB 3.0 Y-cable, but it can get loud.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.

Runner-up

LG SP80NB80

Burns and rips at the same speeds as our top pick, and uses a more universal Micro-USB cable. But it’s sold at fewer stores, and shipping costs more.

Buying Options

Runner-up

LG WP50NB40

For about the same price as our top Blu-ray pick, this LG model is even faster on Blu-ray tasks, though slower on DVD burns.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.

The research

Why you should trust us

Kevin Purdy has been writing for Wirecutter since 2013, testing and assessing products both subjective and seemingly inscrutable. He has written guides to standing desks, USB microphones, Android smartwatches, foam mattresses, and many more items with small differences between them.

Kimber Streams has covered technology for six years, and has been a PC expert for Wirecutter for more than three years. They’ve tested hundreds of laptops, even more storage devices, and way too many peripherals—including wireless mice, mechanical keyboards, and optical drives.

Who this is for

With the ubiquity of streaming services, cloud storage, and (slowly) increasing broadband speeds, many people no longer need optical discs, and most new laptops don’t have optical drives. But plenty of people still need to use such a drive occasionally, whether to play a movie on DVD or Blu-ray, install software that isn’t downloadable from the Internet, or back up data or a personal media library. If you still need an optical drive, but only sometimes, you’re better off getting one that connects via USB rather than buying a chunky laptop with a built-in drive.

Over years of testing, we’ve found that external optical drives have few big differences between them—they tend to look alike and perform similarly. If you already have an optical drive that serves you well and works with the discs you have, you won’t gain much, if anything, from upgrading to one of our picks.

If you still need an optical drive, but only sometimes, you’re better off getting one that connects via USB rather than buying a chunky laptop with a built-in drive.

Any drive that can rip and burn DVDs or Blu-rays can also handle CDs just fine. We didn't test CD-only drives because they're almost impossible to find, DVD drives are inexpensive, and very few people who have CDs don't also have DVDs or Blu-rays.

You also shouldn’t buy a portable drive for a desktop computer that has room for an internal drive, because drives with a dedicated power source tend to be faster and cheaper than portable USB-powered options. Nor should you buy one to use with a tablet.

How we picked

Photo: Michael Hession

The most important features for an optical drive are speed, size and weight, and noise. Price and availability are also important, as we’ve seen models disappear completely or become fare for third-party price-gougers as optical drives become less necessary to most people.

The drives we tested all operated at about the same speed; since most people use these drives only when necessary, it's not worth spending fou

Best External Cd Drive For Mac 2018