At first glance, DIGISTOR's portable Blu-ray Disc writer seems to have it all. Along with a solid design, the DIG-79102 offers impressive specs as well a number of useful features, including an internal battery to supply additional power to the drive. Of course, none of this really means much if the drive doesn't have the performance to back it up and unfortunately, in this case, the DIG-79102 came up short in a few key areas.
According to DIGISTOR, the DIG-79102 can write to BD-R and BD-R DL media at 6x. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried, the drive reached a maximum writing speed of only 5x in our tests. As a result, it took more than 22 minutes to burn an entire 25GB disc and nearly 48 minutes to burn 50GB worth of data. When I contacted DIGISTOR regarding this, they seemed to be well aware of this problem and attributed it to the limitations of USB 2.0. They said that the DIG-79102 handles these limitations by slowing down the writing speed in an attempt to keep the writing quality as high as possible. Considering the drive had no problems reading Blu-ray Discs at 6x, this function may be a bit too sensitive. Hopefully DIGISTOR can resolve this issue with a firmware update or upgrading to USB 3.0, which offers much greater throughput.
The DIG-79102 also has the ability to read and write to all standard DVD formats, including DVD-RAM. The drive performed relatively well when writing to DVD±R discs, taking less than 11 minutes to burn an entire 4.7GB DVD. It also turned in some respectable times when writing to other types of media. However, the writing quality could have been better with some DVD+R DL discs. When it came to reading DVD's, the DIG-79102 was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's as well as most recordable media at 8x, but slowed to only 4x when reading DVD-Videos.
Reading CD's wasn't a problem for the DIG-79102 either. While its seek times were a little higher than I would have liked, the drive read data CD's at speeds as high as 24x and ripped audio CD's at 20x. As a writer, the DIG-79102 performed as expected. The drive was relatively quick when writing to CD-R media and its writing quality was quite good.
DIGISTOR's portable Blu-ray Disc writer also has its share of features. A truly portable drive, the DIG-79102 can be powered completely off a computer's USB bus. It also includes a built in battery for low power systems and for those times when you don't want to run down the battery on your laptop. To prevent buffer underruns, the DIG-79102 is equipped with a 2MB buffer that is backed up by some sort of buffer underrun technology. Last but not least, DIGISTOR has included a great software bundle that includes Arcsoft's TotalMedia Extreme 2 suite as well as their own REWIND archiving software.
The DIG-79102 is available now and can be purchased directly from DIGISTOR or through Amazon for $149. You can also save some money by buying the drive without the Arcsoft suite (DIG-79112) for $129 or any software at all (DIG-79092) for $99. (Editor's note: DIGISTOR is offering FREE 2 day shipping with coupon code FBVIP2DAY.)
| DIGISTOR DIG-79102 Portable 6x Blu-ray Disc Writer |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
8 8 7 |
| Overall: | 8 |
Highs:
- Writes to BD-R, BD-R DL and BD-R LTH media at 6x
- Writes to BD-R XL media at 4x
- Writes to BD-RE, BD-RE DL and BD-RE TL media at 2x
- Writes to DVD±R media at 8x
- Writes to DVD+RW media at 8x
- Writes to DVD-RW media at 6x
- Writes to DVD±R DL media at 6x
- Reads single layer BD-ROM's at 6x
- Reads BD-R, BD-RE and BD-R DL media at 6x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 8x
- Reads DVD±R, DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
- Reads and writes to DVD-RAM media at 5x
- Features 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW writing speeds
- Good DVD±R and CD-R writing quality
- Includes buffer underrun prevention technology
- Powered off the USB bus
- Built-in battery provides extra power
- Includes Arcsoft TotalMedia Extreme 2 suite
- Includes REWIND archiving software for PC and Mac
Lows:
- Failed to write to BD-R and BD-R DL media at 6x
- Reads DVD-Videos at only 4x
- Questionable writing quality with some DVD+R DL media
- High seek times
- Only a 2MB buffer
- Larger and heavier than other portable drives
- Does not support bitsetting
