I-O Data has just unveiled its latest portable Blu-ray drive, the BRP-U6XE which at first may not seem like anything special at all considering there's quite a number of these portable Blu-ray drives on the market these days.

However, there is in fact quite the stand-out feature with this one; it is capable of writing in the new BDXL format, meaning up to 100GB of data can be placed on supporting discs with this drive.

On the downside, the drive only has USB 2.0 connectivity. Considering the drive has BDXL support, I would have thought USB 3.0 would have been the more sensible, ideal interface with its much more accomodating bandwidth for such large amounts of data.

The drive runs measurements of 137 x 154 x 20 mm and supports single and dual layer BD-R disc burning at 6X, triple and quad layer (BDXL) BD-R disc burning at 4X, BD-RE at 2x, DVD-R/+R at 8X, DVD-R/+R dual layer and DVD-RW at 6X, DVD-RAM at 5X, CD-R at 24X and CD-RW at 16X.

I-O Data backs the BRP-U6XE with a 1 year warranty. Apart from the interface gripe, it looks like a pretty nice pickup at its respective US$233'ish price point considering it carries that BDXL support.