Buy Seagate Wireless Plus ##TOP##
Carrying your entire media library just became a bit easier with the Seagate Wireless Plus ($199.99) drive. It's a 1TB hard drive with a built-in battery, media server, and Wi-Fi router, so you can share videos, photos, and music on the road. Instead of having to rely on streaming over potentially expensive 3G/4G Internet, you can stream video and music files to your smartphones, tablets, and laptops anywhere, even if there isn't any Internet access at all. It's a controllable alternative to hotel in-room movies, as well as a way to keep the kids entertained on a multi-hour journey in the car. It irons out many drawbacks on previous wireless drives, and gains our first Editor's Choice award for wireless media drives.
buy seagate wireless plus
The Seagate Media app is the optimal tool for using the Wireless Plus, but you can view and manage the files on the drive using a web browser on your laptop or desktop. Just connect to the Wireless Plus' network and you can browse the files and enjoy the media on the drive as well. The clients aren't limited to computing devices: the Wireless Plus is compatible with DLNA devices like HDTVs, game consoles, and AV receivers. Seagate also claims future compatibility with Samsung smart TVs via an app, as long as they are on the same wireless network. Note that on the iPad and iPhone, iTunes videos will play in the Safari browser. This is due to the iTunes DRM, which requires an Apple app for playback. Non-DRM files play back in the Seagate Media app directly.
Speaking of networks, the Seagate Media app also allows you to use the Internet with the Wireless Plus. Though you are technically connected to the Wireless Plus, if you have a Wi-Fi network available (like at home or using a 3G/4G hotspot on the road) you can connect to that hotspot and continue to use the Internet for browsing in other apps. This is a marked contrast to other wireless drives like the Kingston Wi-Drive($129.99), which has no Internet pass through abilities, or the G-Technology G-Connect (500GB)($199.99 list), which is wireless but requires a wired Ethernet connection for the Internet.
The Seagate Wireless Plus is a good way to carry all of your media files with you without having to schlep a laptop with you. Its 1TB capacity could theoretically hold all your movies, music, PDFs, and photos with you at all times. It's a boon for the frequent commuter or road tripper, especially those with families that travel together with their electronic devices. It'll let you ignore the on demand menu at the hotel or save you if little Jimmy wants to watch the entire 5th season of Spongebob on a trans-continental flight, again. For all these reasons, the Seagate Wireless Plus is our first Editor's Choice for wireless media drives, and comes highly recommended.
Connecting over USB is a plug-n play affair. But when connecting wirelessly, there are a few considerations. To tap into the Wireless Plus from an iOS or Android device, a companion app is required. The app is free of cost on both the Android Play Store and the Apple AppStore. A press of the of a button on the Seagate drive enables WiFi pairing. NOTE: It does take a full 60sec for the blue light to go from blinking to solid, signifying WiFi connections are possible. Then connect your mobile device to the Seagate Wireless Plus like you would any other WiFi network.
UPDATE: After speaking with a Seagate rep we now know, you can save your movies and data wirelessly. Plus 3rd party players are supported which can greatly increase the number of supported codecs, depending on the player. Thanks, Nathan and Bboy!
A (very) early slip through the FCC's database uncovered Seagate's Wireless Plus drive several months ago, but here at CES, the company is finally ready to take the official wraps off of the aforesaid drive. It's a portable 1TB affair, shipping with USB 3.0 support and offering up the ability to stream music and video to practically anything courtesy of its inbuilt wireless module and 10-hour battery. In our testing, the unit did everything it promised, but those with an iOS device will enjoy enhanced usability via the gratis app.
Seagate created this new category of wireless storage devices in 2011 to address consumers' desire to enjoy more content than tablets and smartphones can hold with their limited storage. A CES 2013 Best of Innovations Award Winner, the new Seagate Wireless Plus includes a new option to save content and files to the drive wirelessly through the new Seagate Media app. For the first time, consumers will be able to enjoy capturing a great HD video on their iPhone and then wirelessly uploading it, in full resolution, to Wireless Plus with its 1TB of storage.
"Smartphones and tablets offer amazing new opportunities for Seagate to provide new consumer storage solutions in an increasingly mobile world," said Scott Horn, vice president of Marketing at Seagate. "Seagate developed the concept of wireless storage to free consumers to enjoy their documents, movies, photos and music anywhere in the world, especially when they can't connect to the Internet. Seagate Wireless Plus builds on the success of our first- generation product and takes it even further."
The new 1TB wireless drive comes with a removable SuperSpeed USB3.0 adapter for quick loading of photos, video, music and even documents. Fill it up and go, for true anywhere access of all your favorite entertainment or much needed work-related files anywhere. Because the Wireless Plus creates it's own Wi-Fi network, there is no need to stream or download your content from the Internet or to spend money on a data plan. Everything is with you, where you want it, when you need it with a secure and wireless connection. "Less than half of U.S. mobile phone users are highly satisfied with the storage of their mobile phone, and almost 20% are dissatisfied with their mobile storage capacity," said Brett Sappington, Director of Research at Parks Associates. "As consumption of video on smartphones and tablets continues to grow, consumers will seek the best ways to get content to their mobile device without eating up all of the data in their monthly service plan."
Does the Seagate wireless work with the battery removed & using an external power source? My battery has expanded & I wonder if I can just use it with an external battery pack instead of soldering in a new battery.
The drive has the same basic functionality as the older GoFlex Satellite. It is a external hard drive that allows you to connect to to it wirelessly and then stream media from it to a phone or a tablet (Android or IOS). Up to 8 devices can be connected to it at the same time and share media and up to 3 devices can stream HD-video at the same time.
While the GoFlex Satellite could not act as a bridge between your device and a wireless network, Seagate has updated the Wireless Plus so it now can act as a wireless hub. We do however see quite a big drop in performance when doing this.
The Seagate Wireless Plus is a good update to the GoFlex Satellite. The drive is much faster than its predecessor and we like the new functionality including the ability to use it as a wireless bridge and that we can upload files to it. We had no problems streaming to it from multiple devices at the same time even when the movies was in HD. It would have been nice with a bit more speed though since the limited bandwith means we need to make sure video files do not have a to high bitrate.
I have a couple of thoughts to share with you. First, my experience has been that it's best to never use any of the software apps that come with a n external disk. They seem to bring problems to theMac. Better to format the disk using Apple's Disk Utility. Second, I personally would never use a wireless connection to an external disk. I use only wired. Wireless transfers are much slower and corruption of data can occur. That's my two cents for today.
You may need to move closer to the Wireless Plus to stream or position yourself to avoid obstructions or other devices causing interference, e.g. bluetooth devices, other wireless devices like baby monitors, wireless keyboards, etc.
The Voyager Air delivered very good performance via USB 3.0 in our benchmark tests, writing our 10GB mix of files and folders at 101.5 MBps and reading them at 210.5 MBps. It was slightly faster when working with a single 10GB, writing at 109.2 MBps and reading at 245.6 MBps. File transfers via gigabit ethernet, however, were surprisingly slow: It wrote the mix of small files at just 14.6MBps and read them at only 28 MBps. Scores for the single large file were 18.6 MBps while writing and 51.8MBps reading. The device delivered a smooth wireless streaming experience, with no detected dropouts or pauses at bit rates as high as 2 MBps.
Seagate's Wireless Plus drive -- a follow-on to Seagate's last mobile wireless drive, the Seagate GoFlex Satellite -- is a great idea. Like the GoFlex Satellite, the Seagate Wireless Plus combines a small wireless router with a hard drive, but the Wireless Plus ups the capacity from 500GB to 1TB.
If you want to connect the drive wirelessly to a desktop or a laptop computer, you have to access the drive via a Web browser. According to Seagate, the drive should also show as a separate drive on a Mac OS X machine or a Windows system. Unfortunately, I ran into problems connecting to the drive via the website. I was finally able to make the connection after contacting a Seagate technician who gave me the server IP address.
However, even when I was able to transfer files from my Mac, it was slow. Uploading an entire album from my computer to the Wireless Plus looked like it might take as long as half an hour -- it turned out that the drive doesn't like multiple uploads via a wireless connection.
I found the Wi-Fi connection between the drive and my iPhone 5 sometimes finicky. At first, I couldn't get the iPhone to recognize the drive's wireless network. After contacting Seagate, the representative recommended I reset the drive by sticking a small paperclip in a hole on the bottom. That did the trick. 041b061a72