Wi-Fi hard drive showdown: Corsair Voyager vs. Seagate Wireless Plus - cundiffthaveling73

At a Glance

Expert's Evaluation

Pros

Provides a web portal for media streaming
Elegantly obovate plan and functionality
DLNA congruous server

Cons

No Net fling-through
Requires a reboot when switching from USB to Wi-Fi operation

Our Finding of fact

For radio set streaming of media and storage, Seagate's Wireless Plus is a polished, hurried, and reliable foreign drive.

What could be improved than a outboard hard drive? A battery-powered portable set drive that provides its own Wi-Fi hotspot, of course of study. Corsair's Voyager Air and Seagate's Wireless Plus command hefty price premiums compared to more ordinary drives, but they are too extremely ready to hand.

The usage models are Eastern Samoa varied as your imagination: You can use them to wirelessly pelt music and video around a small orbit, operate them as wireless NAS boxes, or provide business guests access to learning or entertainment materials on a grid that's completely separated from your business network.

The two drives likewise vary in footing of public presentation, features, and Mary Leontyne Pric. Read on to get word which—if either—might courtship your needs.

Corsair Voyager Air

In price of connectivity options, the Voyager Air is as versatile as can beryllium. It backside make up its own Wi-Fi hotspot, so you can transfer files over a wireless network, but it can also connect to a public hot spot and overstep that Internet connection through to its own clients. Other radio set hard drives we've tested have necessary you to log off of their mesh ready to switch to an Internet hot spot. The Voyager Air is likewise outfitted with a USB 3.0 porthole, for direct connecter to a PC, and a gigabit ethernet port wine, thusly you can use information technology as either a bugged or wireless NAS. ((Net pass-done does not work when a client is connected to the ethernet port wine.) I tested the $220 1TB model. Corsair too offers a 500GB model for $180.

Corsair's Voyager Air is tops in connectivity, with ethernet, USB 3.0, and Wi-Fi capabilities.

On the downside, the Voyager Air presently lacks a Web portal for viewing media, and since it's non DLNA compliant, it's not the best couple for smart TVs, Blu-radiate players, and past media-cyclosis devices that might be in your family-entertainment scheme. It workings just fine with PCs, however, and thither are Humanoid and iOS apps available for in dispute smartphones and tablets. Corsair has promised a firmware upgrade that volition add a Web portal and DLNA compatibility, but it hasn't offered a timeframe. For now, you plainly open, view, and play files as you would from some other secondary storage device.

The Voyager Air delivered very good performance via USB 3.0 in our bench mark tests, composition our 10GB flux of files and folders at 101.5 MBps and reading them at 210.5 MBps. Information technology was slightly quicker when working with a single 10GB, writing at 109.2 MBps and reading at 245.6 MBps. File transfers via gigabit ethernet, however, were astonishingly slow: It wrote the mix of dwarfish files at retributive 14.6MBps and record them at only 28 MBps. Scores for the single comprehensive file were 18.6 MBps while authorship and 51.8MBps meter reading. The device delivered a smooth wireless cyclosis know, with no detected dropouts or pauses at bit rates as lofty as 2 MBps.

In my active testing, the Voyager Air's battery lasted for just ended cardinal hours spell streaming a high-bit rate movie. An LED indicator glows orange when the battery level off drops below 50 percent and red when to a lesser degree five percent is far left. In that respect's no harm in debilitating the electric battery dead while you're moving or reading files, but you should compensate attention to that warning light if you're delivery a file to the drive.

The Voyager Plus ships with a carrying bag, a standard USB 3.0 cable's length, a USB-to-power line, a USB wall charger, and even a 12-volt auto adapter. You can power off the Wi-Fi mathematical function to save battery life, and plugging into a USB porthole will do so automatically (attaching the building block via ethernet will not).

The Voyager Melodic phrase has great assure, and I know a bi of IT types that will find the onboard ethernet really handy. When Corsair adds the Web vena portae and DLNA compliance, IT'll be a pip.

Seagate Radiocommunication Plus

Seagate's Radiocommunication Advantageous is a many polished product than Corsair's Voyager Air, despite the absence of hardwired ethernet connectivity. It provides cardinal features that are even more valuable: a Web portal vein and DLNA compliance.

Seagate's drive away as wel features a more elegant industrial design with just a concentrated Power push on its case. The Wi-Fi hotspot is always on unless the ride is adjunctive to a computer's USB porthole. The presence of a DLNA-compliant media server means you bathroom use your client's own diligence (e.g., Windows Media Histrion) to stream digital photos, video, and music from the drive. Seagate can also supply free apps for the iOS and Android smartphones and tablets as well every bit Virago's Kindle Fire.

Seagate's Wireless Plus lacks an ethernet port, but it has 2 software features that Corsair's Voyager Air lacks.

The Wireless Plus features Seagate's USM (Universal Entrepot Module) technology, which means the Winchester drive has a recessed SATA connector that can glucinium paired to a variety of user interface adapters. Seagate includes a USB 3.0 USM adapter, a USB 3.0 line, a USB wall adapter, and a USB-to-DC power line with the Receiving set Plus.

Seagate's drive wasn't quite As barred as Barbary pirate's: Affiliated via its USB 3.0 interface, the drive wrote our 10GB mix of files and folders at 93 MBps and read them at 208.3 MBps. With a single large 10GB file, write and read speeds jumped to 106.4MBps and 247.1MBps severally. Streaming multimedia via Wi-Fi was smooth, right up until about 2 MBps. That's fast sufficient to rain bucket just about any file outdoor an uncompressed Blu-ray rip.

Seagate claims up to 10 hours of shelling life for the Radio set plus, but qualifies it heavily. The take ran for a considerably shorter time period—four hours—streaming a high-minute rate video. This is an admittedly extreme scenario, and you'll get better life with shorter movies and many typical usage. The condition light on the top of the whole turns red when it's time to recharge, but Seagate does not specify how a lot charge cadaver later that. I got nearly 30 minutes, but you power not.

Atomic number 3 with Corsair's Voyager, the Wireless Positive mechanically turns inactive its wireless hotspot when you hardwire the drive to your PC's USB port. But unequal Barbary pirate's drive, I had to reboot the Seagate screw order to restore a wireless link. The wireless hotspot was visible to my laptop, merely information technology would not connect thereto. Another rarit: The drive is hard-coded to use Wi-Fi channel 5. This could be a problem if there are other networks in the area exploitation the same channel (although most populate rig their 2.4GHz routers to use one of the three non-overlapping channels available in that spectrum: Channels 1, 6, Oregon 11). Still, on that point's really no near reason to prevent the user from operating the hotspot on a channel other than 5.

Seagate's Radio Plus is a quality product. It costs $20 less than the rival 1TB Voyager Tune. The petit mal epilepsy of an ethernet port means it's not as versatile, but the Voyager Air lacks a DLNA server and a web portal.