Need help picking a good Blu-Ray burner, or telling if mine is even broken

Back in 2012 I bought an Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray burner for my new build. I started having a few issues with it recognizing disks, and read that it was actually a re-branded Lite On iHBS112-2. The Lite On version had newer firmware updates so I followed a guide to flash it to that.

It worked fine... for the most part, but lately it has been giving me issues again. Namely in regards to being unable to read the contents of a disk. It knows a disk is in the drive, but it thinks it is empty, even when I use tools like Imgburn to check that it is not and even verify a successful burn. The firmware has not been updated since 2012 even for Lite On.

So I have been shopping around for a replacement in case it is a hardware problem.

The ones which caught my attention were the LG WH14NS40 and WH16NS40 (Pretty much the exact same drive, except one supports slightly faster speeds).

Problem is, when reading the reviews on Newegg, I see a fair amount of negative reviews with the EXACT same issue:
LG Electronics 14x SATA Blu-ray Internal Rewriter without Software, Black Model WH14NS40 - Blu-Ray Burners - Newegg.com

Namely.... that it stops reading Blu-Ray disks after a while.

Does anyone have any experience with Blu-Ray burners? Are ANY of them decent? I don't want to install a new drive just to have the same headache over again.

And for that matter.... is it even a hardware issue, or something wrong with Windows? Windows can see that a disk is in the drive, even a dual-layer disk.... but thinks it's empty. Trying to open it just gets me a blank drive, but ImgBurn can see that there is data on the drive and was even able to perform a successful verify. Windows can definitely tell the difference between there being a disk in the drive and none, even tell if it's a pressed or writable disk, but thinks the disk is blank when it's not.

I have 4 of those exact LG burners the WH14N and have experienced 0 problems with reading or writing.

They read anything fine. But I've only ever written to genuine quality Japanese media and have done hundreds of burns dual layer and single layer. If anyone has problems writing I'd look at what they are writing to first. 95% of the writable media sold is outsourced garbage unfortunately.

Newegg reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt as the flood of posts from the general public of people who are clueless clutter them up.

The last Blu-Ray burner I purchased was the LG WH16NS40. Paid Like $60 bucks at the time and it writes single and double layer no problem (supports quad but I never tried). Even reads 10 year old cd-r's lol.

From what I can tell (and what I came to conclusion last time I checked) Pioneer > LG all day. BDR-2209 shouldn't be too hard to find in the US.

have you tried cleaning the lens?

After further looking into it, it appears to be a software issue. Windows won't mount the disk, but other disk-reading software that don't depend on Windows mounting it properly such as ImgBurn can see the disk fine. Happens to DVD too.