Seagate Wireless Plus 1T Wireless Hard Drive Review

Our Review by Jeff Scott on December 12th, 2013
Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar ::
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A fantastic drive for those willing to give up physical size and deal with a couple hiccups for storage space. This 1TB drive holds hundred of movies all streamable to any iOS device with the Seagate Media app.

Made by: Seagate
Price: $199.99 for 1TB Wireless Drive

Hardware/iOS Integration Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Usability Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Reuse Value Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Build Quality Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar

Bottom Line: A fantastic drive for those who are willing to give up physical size and deal with a couple hiccups for storage space. This 1TB drive holds hundred of movies all streamable to any iOS device with the Seagate Media app.

Recommended.

We've previously looked at the Sandisk Connect Wireless Drives. Wireless storage is something that many companies are trying out. Seagate takes things to an extreme; giving us a one terabyte drive capable of holding 500 HD movies, then making it portable and wireless.

The drive comes with wireless N, which allows much quicker transfer, and also includes a USB 3 connection for the fastest transfer of data when not in wireless mode. In testing, moving media to the drive in wireless mode was nice and speedy. Regular USB was rapid as well, although I could not test out the USB 3. With the terabyte of space, it stored everything I threw at it.

Playback is quick and easy as well. It can either connect to a wireless network or host it's own. All of this configuration is set up using the Seagate Media app, but as with the Sandisk wireless drives the third party app It's Playing ($3.99) is considerably better at playing back video in a wider variety of codecs.

The drive, when wireless, can stream HD to three different devices at once or allow up to eight devices to connect to it at once. While the device states a ten hour battery life, in practical use it was considerably less. Especially so with multiple devices streaming at once.

There are a couple downsides to this drive, though. For one, the USB to computer connection requires a special piece to attach to the back. This is, unfortunately, another piece to lose or break. The drive also has a proprietary power adapter - something I am very against. A single USB connection that allowed charging and data transfer would have been greatly appreciated.

I also found that the device would disappear from the network or not allow connection at times. A reboot fixed that issue, but there appears to be an issue or two with the software. For the storage size, it's a great device. If a user doesn't need that much space, they can check out the Sandisk Connect devices for another option.

Recommended.

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