Pioneer Japan sent out a press release today, announcing its new portable, slot-loading Blu-ray Disc writer, the BDR-XS07B-UHD. This USB Type-C equipped drive measures only 135 × 135 x 18 mm and weighs in at a mere 280g. The BDR-XS07B-UHD is capable of 6x BD-R, 6x BD-R DL, 6x BD-R LTH, 2x BD-RE and 2x BD-RE DL writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 6x. It also writes to triple- (100GB) and quad-layer (128GB) BD-R media at 4x and triple-layer (100GB) BD-RE media at 2x.
What makes the BDR-XS07B-UHD truly special is its ability to play back Ultra HD Blu-ray content. When installed in a Windows 10 PC with the included PowerDVD software and an i7 or i5 Kaby Lake processor, users can watch movies at 4K resolutions. The drive also ships with authoring software from CyberLink and is equipped with Pioneer's PureRead4+ technology, which greatly improves the reading performance of scratched and dirty discs. The BDR-XS07B-UHD is expected to hit stores in mid February for about 25,000 Yen ($227US).
