Velocity Micro VMbluDrive Blu-ray Disc External Optical Drive (Black)

by Velocity

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002KKCNEO
• Item model number: VMbluDrive
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #26 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > External Components > Optical Drives > Blu-ray Drives
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 17, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The VmDrive Pro is the perfect accessory for any netbook, desktop, or laptop PC user looking to add complete DVD reading and writing functionality. Install programs and drivers, watch movies, or burn disks, all quickly and easily with the slot loading VmDrive Pro.

The VMbludrive is the perfect accessory for any netbook, notebook, or PC user in need of an added optical drive.

With quick burn and read speeds, the VMbludrive backs up important data, watches movies, and installs programs.

Easy to Use
Fully powered by the USB port, the VmDrive Pro provides complete plug and play functionality with virtually no set up, without ever needing to plug into a wall or socket.

Goes Anywhere
The sleek and slim design of the VmDrive Pro makes for easy travel. Fits virtually anywhere!

The sleek and slim design of the VMdrive fits in any purse, backpack or handbag for easy travel.

Key Features

• Receives full power from the USB ports, perfect for netbook users
• Sleek and stylish slot loading design
• 8x DVD Reader, 8x DVD-R Burner, 4x DVD-RW Burner
• 24x CD Reader, 24x CD-R Burner, 8x CD-RW
• Trademarked Velocity Micro quality, a premier name in boutique PCs

What’s in the Box
Velocity Micro VMbluDrive Blu-ray Disc External Optical Drive
USB cable
Custom video codecs, drivers, and software
Quick start guide

Product Description
This stylish slot loading external DVD burner offers a more refined look for users on the go. Universally compatible via USB connectivity, the sleek VMdrive™ Pro reads and writes both DVDs and CDs, turning your netbook or notebook into the fully functioning powerhouse of your dreams. An unobtrusive and innovative slot loading design ensures that the VMdrive™ Pro goes perfectly with any device, making it an essential addition for every netbook owner concerned with both aesthetics and functionality. Fully powered by your USB port, this drive burns and reads DVDs at 8x while burning and reading CDs at 24x. Unleash the full potential of your device with the VMdrive Pro from Velocity Micro.

END

Product Description

This powerful tray loading external Blu Ray reader turns any desktop or notebook into a fully functional hi-def home theater. Universally compatible via USB connectivity, the super slim VMbludrive can be added to nearly any PC device to produce crisp and clear playback on HD displays. The drive can even be added to your nettop HTPC to provide full 1080p playback on your HD television. Also reads and writes DVDs and CDs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works great!, January 26, 2010

By 

Christopher T Roberts - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Velocity Micro VMbluDrive Blu-ray Disc External Optical Drive (Black) (Personal Computers)

At first impression, this drive appears to work quite well - it is very thin and light.
It works with Windows 7, plug and play for DVDs and CDs - just plug it in and pop in a disk.
I have not used it to write any DVDs or CDs yet, but have used it to load software from DVD and play Blu-Ray disks

It comes with 2 installation CDs -
- Encina CD Maker - I'd suggest skipping this install - I find it easier to use Windows to write data CDs and DVDs which is all it does.
- Cyberlink Blu-ray Disk Suite - This is required to play BluRay disks, and appears to allow building of video DVDs, including a simple movie composer.. This is absolutely worth installing. Be patient, the installation took a long time for me.

I'm using this with a new Dell Inspiron 11 11.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop (Windows 7 Premium) Which comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. As I mentioned, I haven't run into any incompatabilities, and haven't run into any problems yet with power consumption or trouble with any transfer rate on the disks.

Will update if I find more.

Update: 1/29/2012:
Wanted to update this review, as I think there's some mis-information out there about this drive.
I switched to Mac last year, and since the only results I could find from web searches told me that this drive was not compatible with Mac, I never even tried it.

This weekend I had a little time, so I decided to hook it up. I had intended to go ahead and install the driver software under Parallels 7 in a Windows 7 image, and see if I could get it to run, but instead ended up seeing what the state of blu-ray software for Mac was.

Long story short - I was able to get the drive to work with both MakeMKV and Mac-Go's Blu-Ray Player software. The drive is fully recognized under Lion, and while there is no native Blu-Ray Codec for MacOS - both of the above solutions help to solve the problem just fine. With MakeMKV and a mid - 2011 iMac 21", I was able to get rip speeds at nearly 4x on blu-ray.

Still happy with this little drive!

So for anyone out there who's wondering - this drive DOES work on the Mac!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Velocity VMbludrive, March 10, 2010

By 

M. Yared - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Velocity Micro VMbluDrive Blu-ray Disc External Optical Drive (Black) (Personal Computers)

The Velocity VMbludrive looks great. It is thin and light. It works out of the box as just a CD/DVD rom. Just plug and play. You need to install the drivers for other functionalities like playing BluRay disks. As stated by other reviewers, playing BluRay disks needs more computer power than playing regular DVDs so expect issues with lesser computers like netbooks. In fact, the Velocity VMbludrive works perfectly well with my desktop running Vista. It also worked fine with my Asus netbook running Windows 7 Home premium, except for playing BluRay. The device comes with a software (BD advisor) that will check your system for minimum requirements to play BluRay. I ran BD advisor on my netbook and it detected a few incompatibilities, including CPU power (my netbook runs an Atom 270 1.6ghz; I have 2 GB of ram).

Overall, this is a very good external CD/DVD player/burner and BD player (the cheapest external BD player I came across), except if you only intend to use it with a netbook in which case you might not be able to use it as a BD player. You then would need to look at much cheaper external CD/DVD player/burners without BD capabilities that need lesser computing power.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars VM BluDrive, February 4, 2010

By 

Richard Cosner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Velocity Micro VMbluDrive Blu-ray Disc External Optical Drive (Black) (Personal Computers)

The VM Drive is suitable for the intended use, have no issues with the product.

Remember to always check your minimum system requirements for any hardware you purchase for your system. Blu Ray disk player requirements differ from your standard CD DVD Rom/Ram.