Pioneer has announced a new portable Blu-ray drive, the BDR-XU02JM. Besides being portable, it's also a slim line drive that measures 133 x 133 x 12 mm (excluding stand) and weighs 245 grams. It's fitted in a magnesium casing which should especially appeal Ultrabook and Macbook users.
The BDR-XU02JM is able to write to both single-layer and double-layer Blu-ray recordables at speeds of up to 6x. Triple and quadruple layer discs are supported as well and can be written at a maximum of 4x. Also the maximum write speed of BD-R (LtH) discs is 6x and BD-RE discs can be written at a maximum of 2x. As with most optical drives it's also able to write to CD-R (24x) and DVD recordable (8x) discs. It has a buffer of 4 MB and connects to the computer using the USB 2.0 interface which also powers the device.
The drive should become available at the end of month, first in Japan. Later it should become available worldwide. Pioneer has not disclosed any price information.
