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LG CD/DVD writer optical drive for Mac and Windows - REVIEWED!
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May 30, 2025
Need an optical drive for your Mac or Windows system so you can read Audio CDs, watch DVD movies or just read and write data disks? How about a $22.99 LG Electronics unit that works just great with even the latest MacBook Pro with TouchBar? Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ puts the LG 8x USB 2.0 External Optical Drive through its paces on his Mac and finds it does just fine with everything. It's not super fast, but no optical drives are very fast. And $22.99 instead of $79.00 for an Apple SuperDrive? A definite win! Pay close attention and you might even catch a demo of "Thunderbirds Are Go!" from the 1960's! Learn more on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2n7LSck
View Video Transcript
0:00
can a $20 optical drive replace an apple
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super Drive let's find
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[Music]
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out Dave Taylor here and I want to talk
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about Optical drives now what's an
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optical drive it's the thing that lets
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you actually listen to music CDs or
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watch DVDs or actually burn your own
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data so that you can either listen to
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your favorite music use this to watch
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movies on a TV or even just as a storage
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mechanism and the problem is that those
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aren't included in computers anymore so
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you don't have an optical drive whether
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you're running a fancy $3,000 MacBook
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Pro with touch bar like we are or
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whether you have a you know more
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entrylevel Macintosh Windows machine
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whatever's out there the vast majority
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of them don't include Optical drives now
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apple has a solution it's 80 bucks and
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it's just an external
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optical drive an external DVD reader and
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it works but it's pretty spendy so when
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I hit a situation where I needed to
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actually get some audio files off of a
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CD then I realized I needed some sort of
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solution so instead of going to Apple
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and buying that super expensive one I
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actually went on to eBay and Amazon did
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a little research and on Amazon I found
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an LG Electronics 8X USB 2.0
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optical reader for you ready for this 22
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bucks now I'll get back to the price in
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a little bit but that's what this is
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comes with a cable and to be fair the
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cable is only for USB and it's USB 2 so
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it's not USB 3 so it's not super duper
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fast but let's be fair Optical drives
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aren't very fast anyway and here's the
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big difference is that the super drive
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you put the disc in but on this drive it
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actually has a carrier but you know what
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for 22 bucks it works and I decided I
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would show you with a DVD and this is
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Thunderbirds
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Areo who the heck doesn't have that on
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their shelf right so I'm going to put
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this in and let me just turn this a
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little bit so you can see what's going
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on on the screen I'm going to put this
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in and you'll see it's plugged in now I
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have a MacBook Pro with touch bar so
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it's only USBC so I'm using as you can
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possibly see here it's a little USB 3 or
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two to USBC adapter and with all that as
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you can see I let me close these
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reminders add some sound
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maybe well the sound's there I'm not
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sure what's going on but um you can see
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I'm watching a DVD and it's working just
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fine now it can't be on it for too long
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because of copyright issues but suffice
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to say that the optical drive works
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great so let's stop this before I start
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wanting to watch it stop there we go and
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I really like this optical drive now to
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be fair it's not lightning fast it's not
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one of these where it's just slamming
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along but again none of these drives are
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really fast and I've tried it with
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reading audio I've tried it with DVDs I
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have burned a DVD you can see here you
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basically go into to the finder you say
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burn to DVD it then prompts you to
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insert a blank DVD and when I do here's
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what you see all works perfectly fine it
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burned it verified it took a heck of a
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long time to do 5 GB of data but it did
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and then when I put that back in the
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drive it works fine so you know it
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really accomplishes its functions it
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also supports something called mdisk
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format now if you're like me you have no
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idea what that is but this is this
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format that optical drive companies came
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up with that's supposed to give you
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longer shelf life with your data now
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since I don't use these very often cuz I
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have flash drives and external drives
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and cloud storage and stuff not a huge
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big deal to me but it might be to you so
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it does have mdisk support in terms of
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speed the LG actually let's see it's an
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8X dvdr writer and a 24x or 20 you know
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24 four times faster than the actual
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audio content for CDs Now I didn't try
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testing you know and burning a CD but I
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did burn a DVD and like I said it worked
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it's not going to break any speed
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records but I didn't care cuz I had it
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just working in the background while I
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was doing other stuff works with Windows
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works with Mac as I said you know the
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Mac is fantastic because you just plug
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it in and it's ready to roll there's
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nothing you have to do and if you want
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to know the specific model number it's
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the LG Electronics 8X USB 2.0 optical
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drive model ready for this GP
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65n
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S60 now before I go further do me a
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favor click on that subscribe button
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awesome thank you good so we'll be able
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to stay in touch and in terms of price
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Amazon.com it's listed for $29.99 has
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lots of really good reviews but when I
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went to buy it it was actually only
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$22.99 with free shipping so for you
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know really just less than the cost of
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two audio CDs I now have a drive that I
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can plug in and use whenever I want on
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any of my Macintosh systems and frankly
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on any of my Windows systems it does
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come with drivers and you have to always
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always on Windows install the drivers
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first now here's the interesting dilemma
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the drivers come on a CD right but how
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do you plug this in to get to the
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drivers to install it so you can use it
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so there's also Al actually a download
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link which is probably going to work
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better for you or it might do a generic
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profile and then you install the driver
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and now you get some more custom
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features like the M disk support in any
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case I really like it it's so
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inexpensive it was such a simple
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solution and it worked just great I've
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ripped like 15 audio CDs since I bought
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it already and you know Amazon comes and
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shows up super fast
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$22.99 hard to go wrong so this is day
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Taylor with my LG optical drive and I
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need to get back to Thunderbirds cuz
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there go and that's Fab with
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me and I'll catch you in my next video
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[Music]
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#Computer Hardware
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