BANGALORE, INDIA: At a time when USB 3.0 is just around the corner and computer hardware manufacturers are only bucking up for products supporting the new standard, Japanese peripheral and storage vendor Buffalo is all set to roll out the world's first, USB 3.0 powered, 12x Blu-ray burner, BR-X1216U3.

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Buffalo's latest burner boasts of up to 12x speed for writing a single or dual layer Blu-ray disc.That means at full speed, this means a 25GB Blu-ray disc can be written in 11 minutes.

The drive can also record low-cost Blu-ray LTH (Low-to-High) discs at 6X, rewritable BD-RE discs at 2X, and DVDs at 16X and 8X for single and dual-layer discs respectively. Moreover, it is also backward compatible to USB 2.0 connections, but will burn your Blu-rays with “just” 7x speed in that case.

Buffalo says they will roll out the burner at the beginning of next month. The product is currently available in Japan for about 39,100 Yen ($449).