LiteOn's second generation BD-ROM drive is not as fast as we might desired with its 4x maximum supported speed but still, the drive will play back your movies and data BD discs.

First of all, the drive proved to be a good CD reader, performing all tasks with speeds according to specifications, and being able to complete them successfully. DAE tasks will be performed fast enough at approximately 20x, while the CD error correction is adequate, with the drive to sport impressive error hiding capabilities.

Next on, are DVD tests that we performed. Again the drive could be faster than the 8x max speed it offers but reading is reliable enough, even if your DVD discs are not in a perfect shape due to use.

The drive also deals with Blu-ray discs relatively well. Reading of BD-ROM SL and DL discs was smooth, as well as the reproduction of of a Blu-ray disc movie using CyberLink's PowerDVD software bundled with the package. The drive was responsive to any navigation and FF/RW test we did while playing the movie. On the other hand, we are a little bit concerned about the behavior of the drive when accessing specific BD-R and BD-RE discs. For example,we identified some small problems with the Verbatim LTH BD-R as well as the recently introduced TDK and Verbatim BD-R SL discs certified for 6x burning. The drive slowed down reading in some cases and gave a read error with the Verbatim BD-R SL disc for 6x. In addition, it could not finish reading of a TDK BD-RE DL disc. We cannot come up with safe results regarding the behavior of the drive with BD discs that have been burned at 8x or higher, since our tests were limited to no more than 20 such discs. However, it could be nice for Liteon to check these issues and possibly come up with a new firmware upgrade.

With all these in mind , the choice is yours as always. With the optical drive market to be stalled, it's nice to see LiteOn releasing new drives, especially when these retail online for about $70 - a reasonable price for a BD-ROM if you ask me. For those who want the ability to playback Blu-Ray content on their computers, media center PC's, and HTPC's but who don't necessarily want to buy a Blu-Ray writer or swallow the cost of a writer, a Blu-Ray reader could be an ideal choice.