By Charlemagne Losaria
With the advancement of tablets and smartphones, storage has become somewhat of a minor dilemma for consumers. Do you go for the cheaper variant but with less storage capacity or go and squander off your money to buy the variant with highest storage capacity?
What?s in the box:
? Seagate Wireless Plus
? USM adapter with detachable USB 3.0 cable
? Compact USB wall charger
? USB to DC cable
? Quick start guide
? 3-year limited warranty
Tech giants like Apple, Samsung, and Sony has spent billions in R&D in improving the screens of their products that it subtly encourages consumers to pile up movies and series on their gadgets.
Your media content can eat up a lot of space from your device?s internal memory, easily and fast. Purchasing additional external memory cards can only do so much. This is a problem that storage technology vendor Seagate wants to address with the Seagate Wireless Plus.
The device functions as a wireless external storage for your computers and portable media devices such as tablets and smartphones. The 1-TB battery operated storage device generates its own wireless network, allowing you access to your files.
Once your computer has connected to the Seagate Wireless Plus?s Wi-Fi network, type in http://172.25.0.1 as an URL in your browser to launch the Seagate Wireless interface. Here you are presented with a very intuitive UI and several options to control the behavior of the device.
For smartphones and tablets running on iOS and Android, the most convenient way to interact with the Seagate Wireless Plus is to download the official app called Seagate Media.
You might be wondering if you can still check your tweets, emails and notifications while connected to the Seagate Wireless Plus Wi-Fi network. The answer is yes.
There is an option to utilize the Seagate Wireless Plus much like how a router works. The concept is your device connects to the Seagate Wireless Plus and the Seagate Wireless Plus connects to your personal Wi-Fi network acting like a router, allowing you to receive emails or check notifications as you watch your favorite series.
You can also set a password to restrict the access to your files and remotely shut down the device using the connected devices.
Built
In terms of built, the device is sturdy enough with no apparent creaking sounds when pressure is applied. The top part has a metal chrome finish while the sides and the bottom has a rubber matte texture.
The power button is located at the left side and has a green led indicator that lets you know its powered on and another blue indicator when the Wi-Fi is on. The back part is actually a removable USM to USB 3.0 adapter.
Performance
Seagate rated the battery life of the device at 10 hours operational time, which might have been perfect if it we?re true. We only manage to squeeze out more or less 6 hours after streaming three movies and a couple of series episodes.
The streaming experience totally makes up for the battery short-comings. We tried connecting three different devices, a laptop and two smartphones and media streaming is exceptionally fast. We experienced no pauses while streaming on all connected devices.
As a traditional external hard drive, we tested the write speed by adding in 15 GB (94 items) worth of series. On a USB 3.0 port, the transfer clocked in at 15 mins and 32 seconds.
Conclusion
The Seagate Wireless Plus stands out in the sea of external hard drives by providing wireless storage, file sharing and unmatched convenience. I think we can all agree that an additional 1TB of storage space for our devices is always welcome.
At the time of this writing, Villman prices the Seagate Wireless plus at P9,990.00
