Burning optical discs like Blu-ray can be complicated and tedious without a good Blu-ray burning software package. It can be a process fraught with trial and error and a special emphasis on the latter. With lesser applications, it's easy to end up with a burned disc that doesn't work like you expected. Alcohol 120% attacks the problem from a unique angle and provides a healthy mix of usability and competence.

Unfortunately, Alcohol 120% doesn't have a few key features you may be looking for. To make a playable Blu-ray Disc, you have to add specific files and folders (including certificates and the like,) and Alcohol 120% will not set it up for you. Computer whizzes might be able to do it for themselves, but it is not practical for everybody. Alcohol 120% can duplicate playable discs, but it has no decryption support whatsoever, which really decreases the usefulness of the disc-duplication feature. You will be able to copy data discs to your heart's content, but most playable movies come with heavy encryption, and are therefore copy-proof. If you are chiefly interested it burning original play-ready Blu-ray movies, this application might not be the right choice for you.

Alcohol 120% does not write-protect data discs, so you will always be able to add data so long as there is any empty space available. Taking advantage of the massive Blu-ray Disc capacity for data storage has never been easier.

This Blu-ray burning software is one of the fastest products we tested. We timed the software while it burned a 511MB video file and used the results to forecast burning speeds for larger file sizes. According to our calculations, Alcohol 120% can burn a 25GB Blu-ray Disc in just 75 minutes– significantly faster than the industry average. To burn 1GB, Alcohol 120% requires less than five minutes. If you are not the patient type, Alcohol 120% is your kind of application.

Without the ability to decrypt BDs, Alcohol 120% isn't the most powerful option on the market. The high burning speeds and user interface would be even better if it came with Blu-ray menu authoring and movie making.

Getting the necessary technical support in the event of a problem can be tricky. Alcohol 120% offers a wide range of products on their website, and finding technical support relevant to Alcohol 120% is difficult. We could not find a tech support email address or phone number, but there is a forum and FAQs section you can consult if you have a problem.