Advice on buying bluray reader and writer

[Sonic3R]

Hi,

Can anyone help me in advising on which driver should purchase for the following purposes:
- read bd and uhd discs (copy data from them to PC)
- write to mdisc (backup photos family)

I live in Romania and I see the following products and need you to tell me if worth and is ok for above purposes:
- Asus BW-12D1S
- Asus BW-12D1S-U
- Pioneer BDR-212EBK
- LG BE12LU30 Lightscribe
- VERBATIM External Slimline Blu-ray 43890
- LG BH16NS55
- VERBATIM Slimline UltraHD 4K 43888

Thanks

[dcoke22]

Pioneer drives are considered the best these days. The Verbatim 43888 has an older Pioneer drive inside it and should work for ripping DVDs, blu-rays, & 4K UHDs out of the box, no flashing necessary.

Other Pioneer drives are affected by a recent Pioneer firmware update to disable LibreDrive functionality, which is necessary for 4K UHD ripping.

Pioneer firmware update February 2023

There are sellers on this forum that have access to new Pioneer drives with older firmware that works with MakeMKV (and can be used to burn backups to M-disc as well). I believe Asmcom is the seller for Romania.

[isamu]

Hello. So just so I understand this correctly, if I buy the verbatum 43888 drive, it should work out of the box with MakeMKV, and in-turn work with VLC for playing UHD discs no problem?

[dcoke22]

Hello. So just so I understand this correctly, if I buy the verbatum 43888 drive, it should work out of the box with MakeMKV, and in-turn work with VLC for playing UHD discs no problem?

Yes, it should work.

It has a reputation for being power hungry, so if you're powering it via USB-A plugs, you'll need both of them plugged into high powered ports.