We expected LG’s new 6x external Blu-ray burner to perform similarly to the company’s GBW-H20L internal offering, what with the two having identical read/write speed ratings, but we were wrong. The external drive is a bigger, more expensive letdown.
Like the GBW-H20L, the BE06 external model boasts an industry-leading 6x BD-R write rating. And here the latter performed accordingly, writing 22GB of data to a single-layer BD-R disc in a brisk 22:43 (min:sec)In BD-RE writes, however, the BE06 faltered—badly. Boasting the same 2x rating for rewriteable media as the GBW-H20L, the BE06 took more than twice as long as that drive to write 22GB of data to a BD-RE disc—a full hour and 28 minutes! That’s actually slower than just about any Blu-ray burner we’ve tested in recent memory. Not good.

The BE06 redeemed itself with DVD-R writes. The drive is rated at 16x and was able to write 4.38GB to a single-layer disc in 5:42—a second faster than the LG GBW-H20L. The drives were as closely matched on DVD-R reads.

While there’s something to be said for the convenience of an external drive with a USB 2.0 interface, this is offset by the BE06’s gargantuan size. The enclosure is nearly 3 inches longer and an inch wider than its internal brethren—and $100 more expensive. Blu-ray is a tough enough sell as it is without tacking on this drive’s compromises. We’re unimpressed.