Storage and peripheral maker LaCie has introduced its new LaCie Slim Blu-ray, a sleek external Blu-ray drive that can read and write Blu-ray media, enabling users to stash as much as 50 GB on an optical disk as well as play back high-definition movies and content. And, even better, the Slim Blu-ray operates off USB bus power, so it doesn’t require users carry around a separate AC adapter—although it does come with a USB 2.0 Y-cable in case your preferred USB 2.0 port doesn’t offer enough juice.
The Slim Blu-ray offers 6× burning speeds for BD-R, BD-R LtH, and BD-ROM (single layer) discs and 4× burning speeds for BD-ROM (dual layer), and BD-RE discs. Users can also burn DVD±RW media at 8× and old-school CD media at 24×. The drive ships with Windows software for burning discs as well as photo and video editing: PowerDVD 9 comes in the box with 3D Blu-ray support, and LaCie also packs in Power2Go 6, PowerDirector 6, PowerStarter 7, PhotoNow, PowerProducer, InstantBurn, PowerBackup, and MediaShow.
The drive can be used with Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, and carries a suggested retail price of $264.99.
