For those who want to read physical discs still for whatever reason I highly recommend the Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD. It does CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, can run off external pow

For those who want to read physical discs still for whatever reason I highly recommend the Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD. It does CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, can run off external power or over the USB-C connection at slightly slower speeds, is compact and lightweight. Yes, the reign of dongles is well upon us but the upside is that your best optical drive is no longer tied to one machine. I just keep the drive next to my movies and grab it whenever I want to watch something, ripping for future viewing. I still have an older MacBook Pro with optical drive but: it doesn’t do Blu-Ray, it’s loud and thick, it’s a path for dust ingress, and another moving part that can fail in a laptop on the go. If we ever get disc readers back, I hope it’s less spinning platter and more microscopic lidar where you just wave the disc in front of the holoscreen and it instantly reads whatever day it contains. Burning would be a different story I guess…