Pioneer BDR-203

We recently looked at a pair of drives that can read Blu-ray discs but not write them (see the reviews of the Sony and Pioneer drives). They're fine for watching movies, but to use Blu-ray for backup or storage – the discs can hold 50GB, 10 times what a DVD can – you'll need a more expensive writer such as the Pioneer BDR-203.

It was as easy to fit as any CD or DVD drive – you need a spare slot in your desktop computer or you can swap an existing drive for this one. It's a serial ATA drive, so your computer's motherboard must have the appropriate connections (any made in the last four years should).

This is a so-called OEM version so there's no software. We used Cyberlink's PowerDVD 9 to play some Blu-ray movies through it, which worked fine. To create Blu-ray discs you'll need something like Roxio or Nero's latest suites, and once suitable software was installed we were able to create Blu-ray discs without a problem. Your computer must be quite fast (dual-core or better, ideally) too.

These drives will come down in price once they become popular but if you need to create Blu-ray now the BDR-203 is great.