A lot of us are leading mobile-oriented lifestyles, but it may not always be possible for you to lug around your entire digital library with you while on the move. The capacities offered by smartphones and tablets reaches 128GB tops, with majority of the smartphones coming in 16GB and 32GB capacities. You really have to think hard before adding that heavy movie file on your cellphone. But with the Seagate Wireless Plus drive, you get an option to carry around your digital library inside a 2TB hard drive and you can access content on this drive wirelessly. Seagate is currently in its third generation of wireless hard drives, and we are seeing some changes, although not really drastic ones.
Build and Design
On first glance, the Seagate Wireless Plus drive looks quite similar to the last generation Wireless Plus drive. This is thanks to the similar grey brush metal finish and similar placement of the power/Wi-fi and Seagate logo. But there are some changes that have come about with the newer model. For starters, Seagate has done away with the GoFlex type adapter it had with the previous generation drive. Despite the plastic build, we found the drive to be quite sturdy. Barring the power button on one edge and the USB 3.0 interface, other edges are clean.
Seagate Wireless Plus external drive houses a Samsung Spinpoint 2TB drive with a 5400RPM rotational speed and 32MB cache
Features
Seagate Wireless Plus comes in 2TB capacity giving an unformatted space of 1.83GB. It comes with a USB 3.0 interface. It houses a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint M9T having a rotational speed of 5400RPM and cache of 32MB. Apart from the in-built Wi-fi adapter, the Wireless Plus comes with an in-built battery which enables wireless streaming without connecting the drive to a power source. While in the previous generation Wireless Plus drive, you had a dedicated DC-in for charging the drive, the current generation only charges using the USB 3.0 cable. Seagate bundles in a separate 10W adapter if you want to charge it externally, but it still has to be done via the USB 3.0 port.
Seagate Wireless Plus 2TB has two indicators – red indicates less than 20pc battery life and green indicates full charge
Seagate Wireless Plus is accompanied by the Seagate media app which is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Windows Store as well as Amazon Appstore. You will need to download it on your mobile devices. The Wireless Plus forms its own hotspot and will be visible in the wireless settings of your mobile device. You need to connect to the Wireless Plus to be able to stream content.
Screenshot showing the simple layout of the Seagate Media App and the slideshow feature while browsing photos
The Seagate media app interface is quite user-friendly and you can see your content categorised according to its type (videos, photos, music, documents) or you can access the entire drive as well. You can also stay connected to the internet by selecting your local router while you are still connected to the Wireless Plus drive. As it is connecting to the net, it will momentarily disconnect from the drive, till a connection is established with your local network.
Test Setup (for transfer speed test)
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4
RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX
OS Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB
Source Drive: Corsair Neutron GTX, 240GB SSD
PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
No comments:
Post a Comment