Laptops With Dvd Drive Best Buy __EXCLUSIVE__
The best laptops with CD and DVD drives are on the verge of extinction, unfortunately. Trust me! During my tenure as a laptop reviewer, I haven't seen a SINGLE laptop with an optical drive. Now that everything can be downloaded or streamed straight to your PC, including games, software, music, and more, CD and DVD usage is becoming outdated (I know, I'm not happy about either!)
laptops with dvd drive best buy
If you need access to a disc drive, you'd be better off purchasing an external DVD drive that can plug into one of the best laptops (like this highly rated external CD/DVD drive (opens in new tab) from Amazon). Since many manufacturers stopped making laptops with optical drives several years ago, laptops with built-in CD-DVD drives that are available today have obsolete hardware that is several generations old. Keep that in mind!
The best laptop with a CD-DVD drive is, without a doubt, the Acer Aspire 3. It's well priced at less than $600, and of course, it meets your needs with a built-in optical drive, so you can play as many CDs and DVDs on this thing to your heart's desire.
Another best laptop with a built-in optical drive is the HP 17 2021 17.3-inch laptop. This is for folks who have heavy workloads because it comes equipped with 32GB of RAM, which means it is excellent at multitasking and juggling several tasks at once. If you need to run several resource-intensive apps at once, this is the laptop for you. It's also packed with abundance of storage space (1TB HDD + 512GB SSD). Admittedly, it's pricey, but it's worth it for those seeking a capable, productive laptop with a built-in CD-DVD drive.
There's a reason why the Acer Aspire 3 has an Amazon rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars! It's one of the best laptops you can get because it's packed with a large-screen display (17.3 inches), giving you plenty of screen real estate as you surf the web or work on large spreadsheets. Most importantly, it has an optical drive that can fire up any CD or DVD without a hitch.
This HP notebook is another spectacular laptop with an optical drive. As of this writing, it costs $1,099. You may be wondering why this laptop isn't under $1,000 like most laptops with optical drives these days. There are a few reasons for this. One, this laptop has 32GB of RAM, which is a lot! Typically, laptops in this price range have less than 16GB of RAM. RAM makes it easier for your laptop to juggle multiple tasks at once. For example, with 32GB of RAM, you can have 80 tabs open on Google Chrome without it slowing down.
If the last HP laptop is too pricey for you, consider this HP notebook that has a touchscreen display. It's priced at less than $800, and it comes with a 10th Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU, Intel UHD graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. And of course, it has a built-in optical drive, which means you can pop in your favorite CDs and DVDs without any issues.
If you're looking for a decent laptop with a CD drive on the cheap so that it will not break your bank, the Lenovo ThinkPad E570 is an excellent choice. One of the best qualities of this laptop is that it is equipped with a variety of ports for all your peripheral needs.
Looking for a big screen without an equally large price? The Dell Inspiron 17 5770 is a kitchen sink-level laptop. Not only does the Inspiron pack a comfortable keyboard, a 17-inch Full HD screen and that optical drive you're looking for, but it's also got an SD card reader, another dying breed of port. Just don't let its metallic finish fool you, that's a plastic chassis.
Looking for more power? Dell's Inspiron 15 5000 laptop starts at $599 with a Core i5 CPU, and its optical drive comes standard. Upgrade options include a discrete AMD Radeon R7 graphics card for gaming, doubling the memory for more multitasking, a 256GB SSD and a Core i7 processor for more speed.
HP knows that sometimes professionals need optical drives too, and that's why it sells the premium-grade ZBook 17 G5. That's right, the ZBook 17 G5 isn't just a plain old laptop with a CD-DVD drive: it's got a Blu-ray CD-DVD drive, which is even rarer than regular optical drives. This system also features military-grade durability and the blistering speed of an Intel Xeon processor.
Andrew Cunningham has been testing, reviewing, and otherwise writing about PCs, Macs, and other gadgets for AnandTech, Ars Technica, and Wirecutter since 2011. He has been building, upgrading, and fixing PCs for more than 15 years, and he spent five of those years in IT departments buying and repairing laptops and desktops as well as helping people buy the best tech for their needs.
With those criteria in mind, we scoured retailers for the best-selling and top-rated optical drives, and we checked manufacturer websites for models released since our previous update. We ended up with four new models to test: the Asus ZenDrive U9M, the LG BP60NB10, and the Pioneer BDR-XD07B and BDR-XD07UHD. We also retested four picks from the previous version of this guide, since they were all still available for purchase.
We tested each DVD drive by burning an ISO file from a test DVD of video files. We used blank single-layer DVDs from Staples for this test. We then ripped video files from three different test DVDs to compare speeds. When testing Blu-ray drives, we performed the same DVD ripping and burning tests to test their speeds with DVDs. Then, we burned and ripped test video files using blank Verbatim BD-R discs and ripped video files from three additional test Blu-rays.
As we tested, we took note of how easy it was to insert and retrieve discs from each drive, and we paid attention to the noise each drive produced. We also noted the cables that each drive shipped with and what disc-burning software they included.
Andrew Cunningham is a former senior staff writer on Wirecutter's tech team. He has been writing about laptops, phones, routers, and other tech since 2011. Before that he spent five years in IT fixing computers and helping people buy the best tech for their needs. He also co-hosts the book podcast Overdue and the TV podcast Appointment Television.
Ready to go big? Read on for a breakdown of our current top, tested 17-inch laptops for 2023 in a variety of user categories. This is followed by a guide to what to look for in the right 17-inch laptop for you, and concluding with a spec breakout of those top picks.
XPS laptops are the flagships of Dell's consumer line, and the XPS 17 is a top choice for big-screen power users. Our $3,049 test unit was loaded with a 4K touch display and a speedy Core i7-12700H CPU and GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, but lesser models start at $1,849. Plus, Dell's sleek aluminum chassis weighs under five pounds (for non-touch-screen configurations, anyway).
Positioned below the company's Predator series, Acer's Nitro 5 family has long been one of our favorites among affordable gaming notebooks. The 17.3-inch model seen here delivers entertaining 1080p gameplay for under $1,500, with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU making the most of its 144Hz screen. An AMD Ryzen 7 6800H chip provides ample horsepower, and its 16GB of RAM and 1TB solid-state drive double the memory and storage of many mainstream laptops.
With plenty of configurations to choose from (starting at $1,600), the m17 R5 is a big-screen gaming rig with enough power for the most demanding titles, making it among the most ideal 17-inch laptops for gamers. Like all Alienware PCs, it's too costly for budget buyers, but actually reasonably priced considering its components and build quality. It even offers nine hours of battery life, though you'll see less if actually gaming without AC power.
MSI is best known for its gaming laptops, but it is no slouch at making mobile workstations for demanding jobs in 3D design, CGI rendering, engineering, and scientific analysis. The CreatorPro X17 is the serious sibling of MSI's mighty GT77 Titan gaming rig, loaded with independent software vendor (ISV) certifications for professional apps and a gorgeous 4K display. Nvidia's RTX A5500 professional GPU and Intel's blazing Core i9-12900HX, along with up to 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage, make this MSI laptop ready for virtually any task.
The days when most Chromebooks were dinky 11.6-inch laptops for grade-schoolers are over. But 17.3-inch desktop replacements are ultra-rare in the ChromeOS world. Acer's Chromebook 317 is an economy model, with an Intel Celeron instead of a faster Core processor, and 64GB of eMMC flash storage instead of a 128GB or larger SSD. Regardless, the Chromebook 317 will put your favorite websites and online apps on a big screen for a low price, with a comfortable keyboard and four USB ports.
Generally speaking, 17-inch laptops are larger and heavier than 14- and 15-inch models. That's why the LG Gram 17 wows us: At 2.98 pounds, it limbos under the line to qualify as an ultraportable, despite its spacious 2,560-by-1,600-pixel screen and roomy keyboard with numeric keypad. Add a perky Intel Core i7 CPU, a webcam with sharper 1080p instead of 720p resolution, and a phenomenal 20-hour battery, and you've got a dazzling desktop replacement that won't weigh you down.
The lightest 17-inch laptops, with one major exception, generally weigh in at under seven pounds. (The outlier, the LG Gram 17, is an extraordinary case that comes in at under three pounds.) The heaviest, which are invariably gaming models, tip the scales at a back-breaking 7 pounds or more, and in some cases, that's not counting two ponderous AC power bricks. Airline tray table? Forget it. More like checked baggage.
A few 17-inch laptops are general-purpose PCs for people who want an occasionally portable system with a large screen. Most, however, fall into one of two camps with diametrically opposed, but equally hardcore, audiences: mobile workstations, and serious gaming laptops.
In the 17-inch class, workstations and gaming laptops alike benefit from choosing the right screen type. A solid baseline pick would be an in-plane switching (IPS) or indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) panel, which gives you the sharpest colors and contrast, as well as the widest off-center viewing angles. Touch screens aren't very popular in either class, with both gamers and workstation pros preferring the pixel-by-pixel control of a mouse. 041b061a72