The best laptops with CD-DVD drives are rapidly encroaching on extinction. Now that everything can be downloaded or streamed straight to our PC, including games, software, music and more, CD and DVD usage is becoming outdated.
If you only occasionally need access to a disc drive you should consider pairing one of the best external DVD drives with one of the best laptops as it will greatly expand your options.
With the laptop world ditching CD and DVD drives, also known as optical drives, it’s difficult for CD and DVD owners to find laptops that can support their optical media. You may have a large CD collection from the 90s and early 2000s that you want to pop into your laptop for some nostalgic feelings. Or perhaps you have a DVD collection and you’d love to watch a movie or two after plugging away for hours on your laptop. Or maybe you’d just like to have that peace of mind that your laptop has a CD drive in case you need it.
Luckily for you, there are still some laptops with CD drives on the market, and you don’t need to break a sweat looking for one because we’ve done all the work for you. Of course, many of the laptops on this list are underpowered budget models.
What is the best laptop with a CD drive?
The best laptop with a CD-DVD drive depends on your budget. If you can only afford a sub-$500 laptop, your best bet would be the Lenovo ThinkPad E570. Users praise this laptop for its comfortable, clicky keyboard and a decent stock of ports for all their peripheral needs, but keep in mind that it is a budget laptop — you’ll have to make some trade-offs. And in this case, you won’t get the standard 1080p laptop (the $499 Lenovo ThinkPad sports a 1366 x 768-pixel display).
If you have a little more wiggle room in your budget, we’d strongly recommend the Acer Aspire E 15 as the best laptop with a CD drive. With a vibrant display, clear speakers, and a satisfactory selection of ports, you’ll likely be fulfilled with the Acer Aspire E 15. This laptop hovers around the $800 range, but it’s well worth it.
Now if you can afford to splurge, the best laptop with a CD drive that you can get is the MSI GL62M 7REx. Not only can it handle your daily tasks with smooth efficiency, but it can double as a gaming and photo editing machine thanks to its powerful processor and graphics card. This laptop is so well received by buyers, it’s rated 4 out of 5 stars.
If you’re looking for a decent laptop with a CD drive on the cheap so that it will not break your bank, the Lenovo ThinkPad E570 is an excellent choice. One of the best qualities of this laptop is that it is equipped with a variety of ports for all your peripheral needs.
You may also find that you’ll love the clickiness of the keyboard — many laptops in this day and age sacrifice a good keyboard in favor of a slim chassis. But with the Lenovo ThinkPad E570, you’ll have a comfortable keyboard, a decent stock of ports and a CD-DVD drive (that’s rare in this day and age) — all for a decent price.
The affordable Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-576-392H, not to be confused with one of the many other Aspire E15’s) is one of the best value picks out today. For $379 you get a capable 8th Gen Intel Core i3 processor, a full-HD display, and nearly 9 hours of battery life. Its 5-pound weight may put some off, but that’s par for the course with a built-in CD-DVD drive.
Looking for a big screen without an equally large price? The Dell Inspiron 17 5770 is a kitchen sink-level laptop. Not only does the Inspiron pack a comfortable keyboard, a 17-inch Full HD screen and that optical drive you’re looking for, but it’s also got an SD card reader, another dying breed of port. Just don’t let its metallic finish fool you, that’s a plastic chassis.
Looking for more power? Dell’s Inspiron 15 5000 laptop starts at $599 with a Core i5 CPU, and its optical drive comes standard. Upgrade options include a discrete AMD Radeon R7 graphics card for gaming, doubling the memory for more multitasking, a 256GB SSD and a Core i7 processor for more speed.
There’s a reason that the MSI GL62M 7REX has a 4 out of 5 star rating on Amazon. Jam-packed with a GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card, this MSI laptop can handle some solid casual gaming too. If you’ve got a favorite game that is encapsulated in a CD, you don’t need to worry because this laptop comes equipped with a CD-DVD drive.
Many users have praised for the MSI for remaining cool under intensive gaming experiences. Others have put the MSI GL62M 7REX on a pedestal for its fine performance when it comes to photo editing. If you’re looking for a gaming rig or a laptop that can handle photo and video editing, and you are in need of a CD-DVD drive, this is the laptop for you.
Got more money to spend? You truly can have it all. The HP Envy 17 is a premium machine with an aluminum chassis, a 17.3-inch 4K IPS anti-glare display and audio from the sound maestros at Bang & Olufsen. It also packs a 1TB SSD, a 4GB Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card, 16GB of RAM and — of course — a CD-DVD drive.
HP knows that sometimes professionals need optical drives too, and that’s why it sells the premium-grade ZBook 17 G5. That’s right, the ZBook 17 G5 isn’t just a plain old laptop with a CD-DVD drive: it’s got a Blu-ray CD-DVD drive, which is even rarer than regular optical drives. This system also features military-grade durability and the blistering speed of an Intel Xeon processor.
