Operating system support: All drives we tested were detected by Windows 10 and macOS 10.15 Catalina without our installing any additional software, and the operating systems’ built-in disc reading and burning features worked without requiring any extra drivers or configuration.Almost all of the cables included with drives we tested had USB Type-A connectors on the computer’s end, but the inclusion of a USB-C cable or a USB-A–to–C adapter in the box is a nice bonus. On the drive’s end, we prefer the still-common Micro-USB port, though the larger Mini-USB is fine too (optical drives with USB-C ports are rare to nonexistent). Connector and cable: Drives should use standard detachable USB cables so that a frayed or broken cable doesn’t ruin the entire drive.

Noise: All optical drives make noise, but the drive shouldn’t drown out the movie or show you’re trying to watch.

Price: A good DVD drive shouldn’t cost more than $40, and a good Blu-ray drive should cost around $100.

But if you’re burning or ripping discs, the rate at which a drive can move data from your computer’s hard drive to the disc or vice versa becomes more important.

Speed: If all you’ll use your drive for is playing discs, just about any drive you buy will perform similarly.

We didn’t require Blu-ray drives to support reading and writing to Ultra HD (or UHD, or 4K) Blu-ray discs, but we considered it a nice bonus if you didn’t have to pay much more for that feature.

Read and write capability: DVD drives must read and write DVDs and CDs, and Blu-ray drives must read and write Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs.

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