A wireless hard drive for movie-watching travellers
Having to cherry pick which TV shows and movies to store on your low capacity smartphone or tablet can be a pain, especially if you’re about to embark on a long journey. Seagate's Wireless Mobile Storage is an elegant solution to this problem. Multiple users can wirelessly stream files stored on this portable 500GB hard drive and it can run on battery power for up to six hours.
Setting it up is simple. First, you'll need to copy your files to it, either over USB from your computer or wirelessly from your smartphone or tablet. You then play your files via a web interface on your PC or laptop or more likely using Seagate’s app for Android, iOS or Windows Phone (free from www.snipca.com/16512).
We had no performance problems when streaming video to three devices simultaneously, so if you’re on a long road trip individual family members can each watch different videos on separate devices. The Android version of the app can play MP4 and MKV video files, while the iOS version can handle MP4 and QuickTime. For any other file formats you'll have to use a third party video player app. You can also set the app to automatically back up photos from your mobile device.
Wireless range and speed aren't exceptional, but they are good enough for streaming video smoothly. Video files will initially take several seconds to load even if you’re right next to the wireless hard drive. We measured speeds of 2.4MB/s at close proximity, which dropped to 0.4MB/s at a distance of 25 metres. You should, therefore, try to stay as close to it as possible. File transfer speeds over USB are slow because it only works at USB 2.0 levels. When copying large files, we saw overall file transfer speeds of 27MB/s.
The Seagate Wireless Storage is a satisfactory wireless portable drive, but there’s little to set it apart from the competition, apart from its wide choice of colours (black, green, white, red and blue). It's baffling and disappointing that it doesn’t have USB 3.0. The 500GB version of the WD My Passport Wireless is better value as it not only has a USB 3.0 port, but also an SD card reader.
VERDICT
An easy-to-use and colourful way of adding wireless storage to your mobile device, but the lack of USB 3.0 is disappointing.
SPECIFICATIONS
465GB formatted capacity • USB2 • 802.11b/g/n • 125x125x225mm (HxWxD) • 281g • One-year warranty