The 10 Best BD-R Discs

Editor's Notes

February 03, 2021:

Despite it advertising a decent write speed of 72 megabytes per second (or 16x), I’ve unfortunately had to remove the Sony 50BNR25AP6 primarily for quality-related reasons, as they seem to have lost a certain level of quality control. This isn’t surprising, and may be linked to the fact that Blu Ray, which was predicted to become the next DVD in terms of being an optical medium for the film and TV consumer market, has become more of a niche market itself, as people are favoring streaming services as a quicker and more convenient alternative. This is on the back of the fact that a company like Samsung recently announced stopping production and distribution of new Blu Ray players in the US.

However, this may also be an isolated case, as recordable Blu Ray discs still seem somewhat alive as a form of storage media, and many of the other options here – especially those from Verbatim – are still fine. Technically, BD-R (recordable Blu-Ray) also encompasses BD-RE (rewritable or re-recordable Blu-Ray), and while BD-R discs are cheap enough already, some people might, for whatever reason, find a distinct purpose in using BD-RE discs, which is why I’ve added the Verbatim BD-RE. I’ve also added the Verbatim BD-R XL as a triple-layer, 100GB option. Also, for reference, 1x is 4.5 megabytes per second, which is the minimum speed a Blu Ray disc can be written to, although they’re much faster nowadays.

April 12, 2019:

Not all Blu-Ray discs are created equally. First of all, different media manufacturers use slightly different encoding techniques which may or may not be suitable for all purposes. For example, Smart Buy discs are decently priced and great for file archival, but generally speaking, their 50-gigabyte options don't do well with single, large video files stretched across the entire capacity. Another big difference is the number of layers. Most currently available discs use 25-gigabyte layers, though that standard was increased to about 33 gigabytes, and uses the relatively new BDXL encoding protocol. 25 gigabytes means a single layer BDR disc, and 50 gigabytes means a dual, but 100 gigabytes actually means a triple-layer BDXL-format disc. So if you'll be using a 100-gigabyte disc, ensure that your equipment is capable of using the BDXL standard. For what it's worth, most new devices are.

If you're going for reliability and long-term storage, it's hard to argue with anything from Verbatim, as long as you can afford it. They're by far the most well-known optical media manufacturer, and they have a slew of different options available for different purposes, offered in a range of package sizes with various printable and non-printable labels. And if you're looking for performance, it's hard to top Sony's products, as they go to great lengths to ensure the fastest possible write speeds.