The optical drive is now a niche feature and it seems to have become quite irrelevant, especially when it comes to notebook PCs. In fact, you hardly see any laptop manufacturer launching new products with a CD/DVD drive. But what if you have a large physical collection of movies or maybe handle a lot of data that you need to offload on CD drives every day? Maybe you have a niche use case that still requires a CD every now and then? In that case, there still are a few options on the market that still offer an optical drive. There are numerous old laptops that feature an optical drive, but we have hunted down some of the best and fairly new options so that you don’t have to compromise on any features. Check them out!
The HP Envy is a sleek looking 17.3-inch notebook that features a built-in CD/DVD drive. It features Intel’s 10th-gen processors with up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. The models listed also offer a combination of 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD storage, making this a perfect choice for a desktop replacement. The laptop also features an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU adding a decent bump to the graphics performance. Probably the only complaint we have is that it is not available with a 4K resolution screen, which would have made sense on a display this big. It does however come with a healthy set of ports including an HDMI, USB Type-C, and even an SD card slot.
Probably the only worthy 15-inch notebook that we could find with an optical drive is the Lenovo IdeaPad 330 from 2019. Yes, it doesn’t come with the latest hardware, but that is a compromise that you will have to make if you want an optical drive. The laptop features an 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8250U which isn’t all that bad and should be good for your everyday tasks. The notebook also packs 8GB of RAM, 1TB of HDD storage, Dolby Audio speakers, an SD card reader, and even a USB Type-C port.
HP Envy 17t
The HP Envy is a sleek looking 17.3-inch notebook that features a built-in CD/DVD drive. It features Intel’s 10th-gen processors with up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. The models listed also offer a combination of 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD storage, making this a perfect choice for a desktop replacement. The laptop also features an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU adding a decent bump to the graphics performance. Probably the only complaint we have is that it is not available with a 4K resolution screen, which would have made sense on a display this big. It does however come with a healthy set of ports including an HDMI, USB Type-C, and even an SD card slot.
HP Envy 17T-2000 CTO REPLACEMENT BATTERY
Dell continues to offer optical drives on its entry-level Inspiron 3000 series. You can get one in 15-inch or 17-inch, but as of now, we could only find the larger variant on Amazon. The company is offering the notebook with a 10th-Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor paired with up to 32GB of RAM and storage combo options going up to 2TB of SSD and 2TB HDD. It is also fairly priced considering the amount of hardware it is packing and that’s because the overall construction of the notebook is primarily plastic.
Dell Inspiron 3000 17
Dell continues to offer optical drives on its entry-level Inspiron 3000 series. You can get one in 15-inch or 17-inch, but as of now, we could only find the larger variant on Amazon. The company is offering the notebook with a 10th-Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor paired with up to 32GB of RAM and storage combo options going up to 2TB of SSD and 2TB HDD. It is also fairly priced considering the amount of hardware it is packing and that’s because the overall construction of the notebook is primarily plastic.
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Lenovo Ideapad 330
Probably the only worthy 15-inch notebook that we could find with an optical drive is the Lenovo IdeaPad 330 from 2019. Yes, it doesn’t come with the latest hardware, but that is a compromise that you will have to make if you want an optical drive. The laptop features an 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8250U which isn’t all that bad and should be good for your everyday tasks. The notebook also packs 8GB of RAM, 1TB of HDD storage, Dolby Audio speakers, an SD card reader, and even a USB Type-C port.
LENOVO IDEAPAD 330-14AST
Here’s another 17-inch notebook from HP which isn’t as sleek as the Envy 17t, but comes at a substantially lower price. The HP Laptop 17 features a 10th-Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor, up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. The 17.3-inch display comes with a full-HD (1920 x 1080) resolution and if you dig around you could find the HD variant which offers touch support. Additionally, this notebook comes with an SD card slot which means that it can be quite useful if you are a photographer or videographer.
These are some of the last notebooks that offer a built-in optical drive. While we expect some manufacturers to continue to include a CD/DVD drive in upcoming products, chances are that they will be very limited when it comes to options, especially since one can easily get an external USB-based optical drive today.
HP Laptop 17
Here’s another 17-inch notebook from HP which isn’t as sleek as the Envy 17t, but comes at a substantially lower price. The HP Laptop 17 features a 10th-Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor, up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. The 17.3-inch display comes with a full-HD (1920 x 1080) resolution and if you dig around you could find the HD variant which offers touch support. Additionally, this notebook comes with an SD card slot which means that it can be quite useful if you are a photographer or videographer.
These are some of the last notebooks that offer a built-in optical drive. While we expect some manufacturers to continue to include a CD/DVD drive in upcoming products, chances are that they will be very limited when it comes to options, especially since one can easily get an external USB-based optical drive today.
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