As we said at the start, the BDC-S02 is the retail drive for Pioneer's BDC-202. The new firmware release (1.01) seems to have helped the writing quality of the drive, since there were some improvement on a few of the scanning tests which had originally failed with the BDC-202 drive. Despite this fact, there are no other differences between the two drives.

Priced at around US$300, capable of Blu-ray media playback, the BDC-S02 drive lies somewhere between the technology of the DVD-RAM combo drives and the technology of Blu Ray burners.

Keeping in mind that the drive's predecessor has been awarded with the Editor's Choice Award by our editors, and that there was also a slight improvement in the writing quality with previously "problem" media, thanks to the new firmware release, the BDC-S02 drive while not being a "value for money" drive, is a good choice for PC users that require the Blu Ray media playback feature.

You can also take a look at the full review of the BDC-202 on cdrinfo.com.