These are the 4 best laptops with optical drives you can buy

Best Laptops with an Optical Drive Windows Central 2020

Best Overall — HP Envy 17t

With the Envy 17t, HP has created a desirable laptop with a large screen, an optical drive, and just about every other spec you could ask for. It’s sleek, sophisticated, and surprisingly thin, considering it has a 17.3-inch display and, most importantly, you can slot a DVD into it.

Much of the hardware here you’d find elsewhere in HP’s premium lineup. The processor is an 8th Gen Intel Core i7, the graphics come from NVIDIA in the form of a 2GB MX150, and the audio comes courtesy of Bang and Olufsen. This is every bit the high-end laptop you expect, but it doesn’t command a particularly high price.

It’s also making use of some cutting edge internals, like Intel’s Optane memory for storage acceleration. It’s even got pretty good battery life at up to nine hours. What more could you ask for?

If you’re on a tight budget, Dell has just the ticket with the Inspiron 15. It also has plenty of other goodies to go with it, proving you don’t need to spend a lot to get a great laptop and still have an optical drive.

Besides the DVD drive, this Inspiron 15 has a 15.6-inch display, an Intel Core i3 processor, 1TB HDD storage, and 8GB of RAM. Toss in a bunch of USB ports, HDMI, and an SD card slot, and you have a cheap laptop with plenty of flexibility. It’s unusual to find a full Intel Core i processor on a cheap laptop such as this, so the Inspiron 15 has a little more power than some of the competitors in this price range.

An easy way to give this laptop a little extra oomph for a little extra cash is to consider replacing the 1TB HDD with an SSD. For an additional $100 you can get a 1TB SSD that will make your daily life with this laptop a lot faster.

If you’re looking for a reliable value option that’s still well equipped, Lenovo’s Ideapad 330 is what you’re looking for. Not only does it have an optical drive tucked away in its fairly slim side, but inside you’ll find a plethora of other impressive specs.

At 15-inches it’s the sweet spot for people who want a larger display without going overboard into the 17-inch range, and despite an extremely attractive price, it’s packed with plenty of goodies on the inside. An 8th Generation Intel Core i5 is paired with 8GB of RAM SSD storage and plenty of connectivity, including USB-C.

Lenovo always has great keyboards with its laptops, too, so you’ll get an all-around reliable laptop. The Ideapad 330 might be a mid-ranger, but it punches way above its price tag. It’s well designed, built to last, and is a perfect carry for the office or college.

Acer’s Predator gaming-focused notebook has an elegant trick: You can have it both with and without an optical drive. The drive is modular and can be swapped out for an additional cooler. The idea is that when you’re gaming, you probably don’t need the optical drive (unless you’re playing some older games off a disc). So instead, you give the laptop some additional help keeping cool.

Besides this niftiness, you get a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a combination of HDD and SSD storage, and a 15.6-inch, 1080p display with NVIDIA G-Sync for tear-free gaming.

The graphics power is provided by a 6GB NVIDIA GTX 1060, and Acer has a bunch of software tools on board to help you get the best from it. It’s an excellent gaming laptop, all-around. The best way to get one now is a factory refurbished unit, which comes backed by a solid warranty and a more attractive price.

Bottom Line

The optical drive has now become a niche laptop feature, but that doesn’t mean demand for it has gone. There are still people who need it, and there are still laptop makers satisfying that demand. And they fulfill it with quality hardware.

The HP Envy 17t is a great laptop, period. That it has an optical drive is a bonus, but by current standards, it lacks very little. The inclusion of dedicated graphics and Intel Optane memory is a nice touch, and the Envy 17t is extremely well rounded. It even looks the part!

But there are also good choices out there for other needs. Whether you’re on a budget, looking for something smaller, or even need something with the power to handle gaming, there’s something out there for you. The days of installing PC games from a DVD are long gone, but Acer’s Predator 15 has an innovative design that keeps the optical drive alive, but only when you need it.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

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