Best Blu-ray Drive for MacBook Pro to play Blu-ray

The Mid 2012 MacBook Pro 15 was the last product in the lineup to feature a disc drive and Apple had stopped selling it in 2016. So if you are a movie fan and want to watch Blu-ray movies on a MacBook Pro, then I assume an external Blu-ray drive is needed. Check out our recommendation of the top 3 Blu-ray drives for MacBook Pro that you can use to play Blu-ray movies.

Best Blu-ray Drive for MacBook Pro

No.1. VersionTECH. USB External DVD CD Drive Burner Superdrive for Apple Mac Macbook Pro/Air iMac Laptop, Retail Package

The VersionTech Superdrive can work with not only Windows but also MacOS. It's a Blu-ray/DVD/CD drive that requires no drive program. And it's directly powered by the USB port so you don't need extra power supply for it. The drive itself is lightweight and slim, you can carry it around with ease.

No.2. ASUS Computer International Direct ASUS BW-16D1X-U Powerful Blu-ray Drive with 16x Writing Speed and USB 3.0 for Both Mac/PC Optical Drive BW-16D1X-U

The ASUS BW-16D1X-U Blu-ray drive can also work with both PC and Mac. It features USB3.0 and the 16X writing speed to help users quickly play and burn Blu-ray/DVD discs, thanks to its bigger-than-average body. The diamond-shaped design gives it a sleek and clean look. It combines simplicity and powerful features perfectly. If you want a Blu-ray drive that can help you burn/read Blu-ray with the highest speed, this is the one to get.

No.3. Pioneer BDR-XS06 Blu-Ray 6X/DVD/CD USB 3.0 Slim External Slot Burner

The Pioneer slim BD drive features USB3.0 and it comes with a USB3.0 cable out of the box. Along with the USB cable is the software CD to help you set things up in your computer. It can read BD-ROM discs, and a lot of other BD-R discs of different layers. It's also a powerful Blu-ray burner to help you write data to single, dual, triple, and quad layer BD-R discs. It's also powered by USB so you don't need to prepare independent power supply for it.

No.4. VicTsing Blu-Ray drive

Crafted with scratch-proof sandblasted surface and fashionable design, this ultra slim 9.5mm cassette Macbook pro Blu ray drive supports Blu-rays with the outstanding capability to read or burn each format. With a USB3.0 port, this drive can efficiently bring you worry-free ultra-speed transmission with ease. No additional power supply or other program installation is required, all you need to do is to connect the Macbook pro Blu ray drive to devices with USB 3.0 interface directly to achieve the desired plug and play function.

No.5. Pioneer BDR-XD05

As one of the slimmest Macbook pro Blu ray drive on the market, the Pioneer BDR-XD05 is able to read and write standard Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs, BD-R triple layer, Quad layer, as well as BD-RE triple layer. Moreover, this drive has a few remarkable and unique features that surprise you: its PowerRead mode can provide smoother movie playback if there is fingerprints or minor surface scratches on a disc, and the PureRead mode can minimize sound glitches by adjusting the drive parameters during music playback.

How to rip your Blu-ray collection with your Blu-ray optical drive and a Blu-ray ripper

After getting a suitable Blu-ray drive, you can easily enjoy the pleasure that is brought to you by the high resolution of Blu-ray movies. Other than watching a Blu-ray movie, you can do other cool things with a Blu-ray drive, like getting your Blu-ray collection ripped. It'll make playback of the movies easier as you'll have the movie in common video formats on your computer, which could even be transferred to your mobile devices for playback if you want. And as Blu-ray discs carry the risk of being damaged and lost, you can consider the ripping of your Blu-ray collection as a backup.

If you are intrigued, go check out Leawo Blu-ray Ripper. It's one of the best Blu-ray ripper out there to help you rip your Blu-ray collection. The biggest attraction of it is its ability to rip and contain all the data from your Blu-ray disc to a MKV video, which basically is lossless. Other than that, it can also rip Blu-ray to MP4, AVI, WMV, AAC, MP3, and a lot of other formats. Its ability to bypass the copy protection on Blu-ray discs assures that you can use it to rip any Blu-ray disc you can possibly throw at it. And the whole program is easy to use, even novices would find no difficulty using the program for the first time. The program used to be an independant program but a few version ago it was integrated into a software suite named Leawo Prof.Media.

   

Check out how the program works in the content below, it'll help you quickly master the program.

Step 1. Launch Leawo Blu-ray Ripper by opening Prof.Media first. The shortcut key is laid right in the main interface of Prof.Media. When you see the icon, click on it and you will be directed to the interface of Leawo Blu-ray Ripper.

Step 2. When you enter the interface of Leawo Blu-ray Ripper, there's a sign in the center that might catch your eye. It's telling you to drag the source files to it. It's one way to import the Blu-ray disc content to the program. If you have previously enter the Blu-ray disc in your Blu-ray optical drive, then you can open the Blu-ray folder in File Explorer and drag the folder to any place on the interface to import the media files in the disc to the program. Another means is to click the Add Blu-ray/DVD button, on the following menu, click Add from CD-ROM and you will see your disc in the following menu, click on it to start loading the disc to the program.

Step 3. Different choices are offered to you for choosing what content in the disc to rip. To quickly choose all the content, directly click on the Full Movie button on top of the left sidebar. If you only want the main movie, then click Main Movie. And you would undoubtedly have the option to manually choose the content to rip, that's what Custom Mode does. Click OK to get to the next phase.

Step 4. The videos you've chosen to rip in the last step will be added to the video list. In this step the most important thing to do is to select a format to convert the source videos into. The Format button sits on the left side of the green Convert button on top of the video list. On it you can see the format that's currently set as default. Click on this button and there will be a menu with 3 buttons. Click Change to open a new panel with all the supported output formats. Select one from the provided formats. If you want to rip the Blu-ray movie to lossless MKV, go to Format>Lossless video and click Multi-track MKV. The lossless MKV format will also allow you to include multiple or even all the subtitles and audio tracks in it. Click on the format you need and you will be back to the video list and the format will be set as default at the same time.

Step 5. Click the Convert button I mentioned previously and a sidebar would appear above the video list. You can find the default output path for the output videos on it. You can set a new location for the output videos by clicking the "..." button next to it. And then you may start ripping the disc by clicking the Convert button below the output path.

Below is the video guide to show you how to rip Blu-ray with Leawo Blu-ray Ripper, it uses the Windows version but the steps are universal.

Video player apps to play Blu-ray on MacBook Pro

Since macOS doesn't support Blu-ray, so you won't be able to use the built-in iTunes or QuickTime to play a Blu-ray movie on your MacBook pro. you are going to need a Blu-ray player app to play a Blu-ray disc after getting a Blu-ray drive. Below are the Blu-ray player apps you can use on your MacBook Pro to play a Blu-ray movie.

#1. Leawo Blu-ray Player

Leawo Blu-ray player is a free and powerful Blu-ray player app. It can play most of the commercial Blu-ray discs out there with encryptions and copy protections on them. Most of the Blu-ray Player apps are not free, but Leawo Blu-ray Player is an exception. You can have great Blu-ray playback experience with it without having to pay for it. Other than being a Blu-ray player, it can also play DVDs and other media files with no problem.

#2. MPlayerOSX

MPlayerOSX, as the binary distribution of MPlayer (The Movie Player for Linux), supports a large quantity of native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codec. You can also use the Blu ray player for Macbook pro to play CD, DVD, MWV and more other files. As one of the fastest choices on OSX to play back HD H264 videos, MPlayerOSX also gives you a lot of options to deinterlace, denoise and apply filters to improve the video rendering.

With a Blu-ray drive and a Blu-ray player app, you will then have everything needed for watching Blu-ray movies on a MacBook Pro.