Asus SBW-06C1S slim external blu-ray burner first impressions

Hi, this is not a review but just some first impressions. I'm sorry I never got around to it but I've been so busy I haven't had a lot of time.
I've had this blu-ray burner about one month now. I got it from Newegg for $200 which can be found here.
I initially got some Verbatim BD-REs for testing but yesterday I recieved a 15 pack of Ridata BD-Rs and I began transferring my data over to them.
My testing hasn't been scientific by any means, but I found that burning blu-ray discs (BD-RE or BD-R) it will only burn at 1x, no matter what setting I use. This is with both Nero 7 in Windows 7 and cdrtools in Ubuntu. File copy is as expected, I'm getting around 3-4x for file copies from disc. It is USB powered but through a Y cable.
The drive itself when it spins up and accesses discs is noisy. There is no noticeable vibration however, and the sound of it when it's spinning is very smooth (but loud like a jet engine ). Accessing blu-ray discs however is very quick. Just a few seconds from insertion and it's available to be accessed via the desktop.
It's what Asus calls a slim drive, perhaps it's slim for blu-ray I'm not sure. It's about the size of a standard external USB powered optical drive. It's plastic, but it's surprisingly solid, and the tray itself is extremely solid, it doesn't push down when I insert a disc and click it into place.
Last night in Nero I burned a data disc, 19,102 MB according to Nero, and it took 82 minutes (definitely 1x). File copying from the disc was around 15MB/sec which isn't bad considering the speeds from DVD that I'm used to (DVD tops out for me at around 9-10MB/sec MAX).
I've done about 10 or 12 burns with both BD-RE and BD-R and the drive itself seems reliable so far. I get reliable burns every time, albeit slowly.
I just checked Asus' website and there are not firmware upgrades for it at this time. Hopefully at some point a future firmware revision might correct the burning speed issue.
Personally if it weren't for the slow burns, I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for an external blu-ray burner. I would still recommend it if you can be patient, but if you were to backup 50GB of data I would imagine it would take around 3 hours, which is pretty rediculous.
Any questions?

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention, it comes with an Asus software disc and 3D glasses. Personally I have no need for either but someone might find it interesting.

Edit 2: If I were to loosely use NBR's methodology to breakdown pros and cons, it would be this.

PROS:
Excellent build quality. Very solid, especially the tray.
Fast access times.
Little to no vibration.
No coasters. Reliable burning.

CONS:
A little noisy.
Average read speeds.
SLOW burn speeds.

 

Thanks for your first impressions!

I think those slim type burners have been always slow for burning even for DVDs.

When I was looking for a Blu-ray burner for my laptop, I figured the USB 2.0 connection was just too slow for Blu-ray burning.

So, I decided to go with a Pioneer BDR-205 & Vantec eSATA enclosure case.

This morning, I burned a 16.7GB file onto a BD-R 25GB disc. It took 9 minutes and 5 seconds using ImgBurn.

Here is a part of the log.

I 08:50:43 Graph Data File: C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\ImgBurn\Graph Data Files\PIONEER_BD-RW_BDR-205_1.09_FRIDAY-OCTOBER-22-2010_8-41_AM_RITEK-BR2-00_MAX.ibg
I 08:50:43 Export Successfully Completed!
I 08:50:43 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:09:05
I 08:50:43 Average Write Rate: 34,172 KB/s (7.6x) - Maximum Write Rate: 45,049 KB/s (10.0x)

 

Holy cow! That's a pretty good burn speed!

 

Oh yeah... Come to think of it, USB 2.0 would be limited to ~20-30MB/s max.

 

That is true, but according to Nero, 2x blu-ray is 8,990 KB/sec. Considering I can read blu-ray discs at 3 to 4x I should be able to atleast write at 2x, but it wont. I'm not sure why.
For me personally I don't mind because I only wanted a blu-ray burner to make occasional backups of my data. I only burn backup discs every few months or so, so it's not an issue for me, but it could be for others that want to burn blu-ray discs more frequently than I do.

 

I guess I'm an impatient person.

Here is the review of the Pioneer BDR-205.

Pioneer BDR-205 Blu-ray drive Review | MyCE – My Consumer Electronics

According to their testing, it had no problems overspeeding the 4x Ridata BR2 media which I also use to 10x. This morning I was in a hurry, so I burned @10x. The speed reached 10x @86% of the process. Hence, the average speed is 7.6x. I normally burn @6x though just to be on the safe side. It reads fast too and very quiet.

 

Could be the media you are using. Not that the media is not good. Actually, that's a great media. I'm using the same media too. Just some sort of media compatibility. I bet the future firmware update would solve the problem. Application matter too.

 

That could be. The media I've used are Ridata 25GB 4x BD-R and Verbatim 25GB 2x BD-RE. With both Nero let me select 2x as the writing speed, and I also used 2x with cdrecord in Ubuntu. Under all cases they would only burn at 1x. So hopefully it's just a firmware upgrade that's needed as I highly doubt it's because of the USB 2.0 interface.

 

My guess is that your slow speeds are a power issue, which actually means that it _is_ because of the USB 2.0 interface. The drive you have seems to be powered through USB, which isn't a whole lot of power when you get right down to it. HRK's drive is designed as a desktop internal drive, and he's plugging it into an eSATA 5.25" case, which means it almost certainly has it's own wall plug to provide it with a lot more power.

 

It uses a Y cable so it plugs into two USB ports, so I suspect that's not the case.

 

Hi guys, do you think I could buy this Asus external bluray burner and remove the optical drive from within the USB enclosure? It's for USD 169 + USD20 Mail in rebate at amazon and that's a good price for a bluray burner. However I need a slimline drive to fit my Silversone LC09 case. I'm pretty sure it has the regular mini SATA (7 pins) for power + regular SATA (data) cable. I think I've seen a post somewhere where a guy did what I want.. but couldn't find it yet...

Note: It's to be used on a Linux build (Ubuntu) + XBMC.

Looking forward you feedback