Pioneer Japan recently sent out a press today, announcing its new portable, clamshell type Blu-ray Disc writer, the BDR-XD06J-UHD. This USB 3.0 equipped drive measures only 133 × 14.8 x 133 mm and weighs in at a mere 230g. The BDR-XD06J-UHD is capable of 6x BD-R, 6x BD-R DL, 4x BD-R LTH, 2x BD-RE and 2x BD-RE DL writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 6x. It also writes to triple- (100GB) and quad-layer (128GB) BD-R media at 4x and triple-layer (100GB) BD-RE media at 2x.

pioneer BDR XD06J UHD

What makes the BDR-XD06J-UHD truly special is its ability to play back Ultra HD Blu-ray content. When installed in a Windows 10 PC with the included WinDVD software and an i7 or i5 Kaby Lake processor, users can play back movies at 4K resolutions. The drive also ships with authoring software from CyberLink and is equipped with Pioneer's PureRead3+ technology, which greatly improves the reading performance of scratched and dirty discs. The BDR-XD06J-UHD is expected to hit stores in late March for about 15,000 Yen ($134US).