Laptop DVD Burner & Laptop Blue-Ray Burner Buyers Guide

Buyers advice for the laptop DVD burner & the laptop Blue-Ray Burner

Welcome to The World of Laptop Optical

Regardless of the laptop type and whether or not it has an internal or external drive, the most common type of optical drive that you will in fact find in a laptop today is a DVD+/-RW drive, also commonly called a laptop DVD burner.

Because DVD+/-RW drives are the most common optical format these days we will actually be highlighting it more so than the other optical drive formats in this guide. 

Blue-Ray will also be a major focus because it is sure to be the future standard. 

While we hate to be biased, we are going to leave HD-DVD out of this guide for it looks to have already gone the way of the 8-track.

Blue-Ray and HD DVD drives in laptops are not that super common today, but we do expect to see Blue-Ray as the next optical drive standard in the not so distant future and incorporated in more laptops most definitely.

Blue-Ray is a revolution over the original DVD format offering next-generation technological advances to boot. The futuristic sounding name in fact is derived from its use of the newer type of blue-violet laser.

To some peoples surprise HD-DVD also uses a blue laser, but its underlying technology in contrast is more simply an evolution of the original DVD format. In our opinion this meager evolution is actually already leading HD-DVD to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Of course the lack of a cool name may have something to do with it too.

The laptop DVD-RW drive as we mentioned in the introduction is the most common laptop optical drive these days. They are not only the evolution of the CD-RW/CD burner, but a laptop DVD burner hands down is one of the most versatile drives out there.

Laptop DVD-RW drives can not only read standard CD or DVD-ROM discs, but they can also write/record to special CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW discs too. Now how is that for versatile? Hence the versatile in (DVD) Digital Versatile Disc.

One layer or two?

With a laptop DVD burner you even have some flexibility with storage capacity and price for recording media.

Recording media options include what’s called either a single-layer or dual-layer disc. Single-layer discs have a storage capacity of 4.7GB and dual-layer double that respectively. Price wise however dual-layer discs are going to cost you over double single layer prices.

Nevertheless, it is nice to have an option of storage capacity, especially if say you ever wanted to pack more of your cherished family photos onto a disc for archiving, or backup some of your important client data or class projects, or even squeeze your favorite movie on a disc in its entirety.

As you see, a laptop DVD burner is truly versatile, and a must for students, business users, and home users alike.


Laptop Blue-Ray Burner

Soon to be the dominant next-generation optical format, Blue-Ray is a complete revolution over older CD and DVD technologies offering superior storage capacity for High-Definition content of today and the future.

Blue-Ray drives offer a substantial storage capacity increase over standard DVD technologies, and similar to a laptop DVD burner, Blue-Ray drives also have media recording options in either single-layer or dual-layer.

In order to meet the storage demands for HD content, single-layer discs hold a whopping 25GB and dual-layer discs a staggering 50GB. Sweet!

On top of all this a laptop Blue-Ray burner can also read and write regular DVD and CD media. As you see Blue-Ray has next-gen written all over it.

But Should I fork out the funds?

As of this writing the price premium for a laptop blue-ray burner is a bit steep over the traditional laptop DVD burner so we don’t quite recommend the laptop Blue-Ray burner for everyone just yet.

However for the show off, hardcore computer enthusiast or money isn’t really an option individual a next-gen optical drive like a laptop Blue-Ray burner may just be the ticket.


DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive

Today even the cheapest new laptop will most certainly include a laptop DVD burner, but if you are on a truly tight budget and say shopping for a used or refurbished notebook you may still find a laptop with a DVD/CD-RW Combo drive.

This is our absolute minimum recommendation these days for any laptop to be honest so we aren’t going to go that much in depth. In a nutshell a CD-RW combo drive will allow you to read standard CD and DVD discs, but you can only in fact record/burn to CD’s.


The Other Drives

Last and certainly least are standard CD and DVD read only drives. Unless you are getting a hand me down laptop we doubt you will be seeing one of these little guys.These drives do nothing but read either CD or DVD’s. Yippy!!

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