Verbatim 43890 External Slimline Mobile USB 3.2 Blu-ray Writer

A great compact, lightweight portable Blu-Ray drive. There's no additional power connector, only a single USB-C port on the back. Cable is supplied in the box. Not silent when running, but not particularly noisy. Getting the disc in and out is, not surprisingly, slightly more fiddly than a standard tray-loading drive, since you need to push the disc onto the central spindle. But that's unavoidable on such a small drive. Build quality seems good, and it works fine with my Windows 10 PC and various test discs. Works great so far, and seems to be good value for money. Note that this drive does not work with MakeMkv out-of-the-box. It seems it used to, but the manufacturer has revised the internals and changed the actual drive from a Pioneer one to LG. According to the diagnostics the internals are now a Hitachi-LG BU40N. You will definitely need to flash the firmware if you need it to work with MakeMkv. Happily, this can be done fairly easily and afterwards it works perfectly.

I needed a USB 4K/Blu-ray drive that could back up my growing collection of 4K UHD discs, and after a little research it appeared this one likely could - and it does! I’ve backed up dozens of 4K UHD Blu-rays using it, as well as regular Blu-rays, DVDs and even music CDs. It can play 4K UHD Blu-rays, standard Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs. What was most important to me, though, was that it could back up 4K UHD Blu-rays specifically using the right software. That’s not a common feature among drives (unlike regular Blu-ray and DVD backup), so this is something of a unicorn. This ability though depends on the drive’s firmware, mine came with the correct version, but that might not always be the case for everyone. For general use, it’s plug-and-play - instantly recognised on both Windows and Linux with no driver installs needed. It may come with software for burning discs (I never used it), and mine also included a blank Verbatim BD-R disc. It’s slim, light and well made - perfect if you need something portable. It isn’t silent when spinning at full speed, but for playback it’s perfectly fine. Purchased August 2024 for £90.49.

An amazing product by Verbatim, extremely easy to setup and use. Superb value for money; I would've paid more for such an excellent product. Read speed is lightning fast and works perfectly with MakeMKV. An excellent product, highly recommended.

Honestly I would give this four and a half stars which would be more accurate. The player is genuinely very good and does what it says it does, but it does have some minor flaws: First of all, it’s very flimsy feeling, it looks great- but even with a case purchased for it I’m nervous about taking it around. the top of it the case is slightly warped which concerns me but does not impede functionality of the device, and that might just be my unit anyway. The Y cable is quite annoying as it takes up 2 USB slots but if you have a USB splitter it’s not too bad. Secondly, this device is very very loud, do not expect it to be quiet when writing even at low speeds, I did expect this though so it wasn’t really a factor when I was buying it. Maybe don’t use it in any libraries. It reads all my Blurays very very well and lets me make my own with relative ease. Be warned though you do need some technical knowledge and external software to get most new commercial Blurays to play- this is not the fault of the player. Box was really well packed and came with a helpful user guide disc.

It's plug and play, the additional Nero software is good and has been around for a long time so it's reliable. You also get a rewritable Blu-ray disc in the box which was a nice bonus. The main takeaway for me was this drive has an LG optical drive model that is compatible for a firmware upgrade that takes less than 2 minutes to allow me to view and read 4k blu ray movies, saving me a fortune for a 4k drive

I had a terrible experience with this blu-ray drive and this is the first bad review that I have written. On first impressions the drive is a really nice and neat design, BUT the problems emidiatly flew thick and fast :( to start with the setup guide recomends just a single usb 3 port for data/power, the drive was unstable this method and could barely read the software CD it came with and through either straight into an available usb 3.0 blue port or through my 2amp powered usb 3.0 hub still not usable. So I tried the second method by plugging in the dual usb (power usb followed by data and to my horror the same result, clearly the drive couldn't get enough power......CRAZY as my old 2013 Samung BD burner runs off a SINGLE usb 2.0 port! this thing with 2usb 3.0 ports was getting nearly 4x the input power of the old Samsung and still it would barely load any discs. So Then I thought OK I'll try the 3amp power supply and bingo! it worked like a charm.... or so I though.... boy was I wrong. So the main thing I wanted to use this drive for was blu-ray conversion to MP4 so I could take my personal collection of Film/TV with me on my tablet ect and at first the drive seemed to be working fine and I evenn managed to convert a couple of 2hr plus films but THEN my nearly brand new Ryzen 5 Laptop crashed and my brand new 4TB External HDD started making horrid clicking noises!! natrually I paniced as my new computer which had cost me a LOT of my money seemed like it could have died on me, so I restarted my machine and all was well again...until a few mins later the same thing AAAAAAHHH :( and repeat several times, then I disconnected the Verbatim Blu-ray and hmmm the problem seems completely fixed, I reconnected my OLD slower Samsung Blu-ray and ripped several more films which took several hours without a hitch....hmm that's wierd I thought. Now I decided to carry out an experinment with this new drive, so with the mains adaptor I connected it to a spare usb hub with a mouse in it and to my surprise the hub and mouse connected to hub which was not connected to my pc turned on and the mouse flashed on and off surging with power leaking from the blu-ray drive back into the ports of the hub!! I am so glad I noticed this early enough so as not to perminantly damage my expensive new ASUS gaming laptop and 4TB WD Passport drive, I was lucky that my equipment is still OK and I am converting more films on older slower drive as we speak. So in conclusion I am truly sorry to have to post a bad review about this product but this fault is dangerous to your PC and must be known so it might not happen to anyone else. Update: My New 4TB HDD Has just died click,click,click..... Glad I managed to back it up before it died.

i bought this so i could rip my 4k blu ray discs in full quality using makemkv, it sadly didnt work once outside of the box, but it was possible! all i had to do was flash the drive and it worked perfectly with makemkv, and i was able to perfectly rip my 4k discs, highly recommend if youre using this for makemkv! the drive is also very thin and light, very portable and also comes with a blank bluray disc!

Perhaps a little more cost than others lesser known brands available, however, build quality is excellent. Functions very well and comes with blank Blu-ray Disc, quiet too.