Going flexible with Seagate's portable
wireless NAS
The problem with tablets and smartphones
and portable multimedia devices? Storage space. That age old predicament of
having the best multimedia capabilities at your fingertips without the capacity
to play them all. The Seagate GoFlex Satellite attempts to tackle this problem
by actually being a portable wireless NAS, and we're quite ready to hug it for
this.
You turn on the GoFlex Satellite and it
broadcasts a Wi-Fi network that you can tap into with your tablet or
smartphone. You then run the free downloadable GoFlex Media app and your device
would be ready to stream all of the 500GB worth of content you care to upload
to the drive. You can manage the drive easily and even configure its security.
Up to three devices can get connected to it and stream individual content. It's
all really that simple.
The content streams relatively fast, and
you don't need to worry about buffers or delays. It supports pretty much every
multimedia format you care to run, unless you're using an iOS device; the
GoFlex Satellite doesn't allow it to play file types it doesn't support in the
first place, which is highly unfortunate. What's also unfortunate is that the
GoFlex Satellite doesn't bridge Wi-Fi connections, meaning that you can't
access the Internet while using it at the same time.
The GoFlex Satellite works over USB3.0 for
pretty much everything (it charges on USB, too), which means you can get your
content speedily transferred. The battery life, in our test, lasted a good 5
hours of continuous streaming (just like the manual said), which is pretty good
by our books. The device only comes in 500GB, but that's more than enough space
that you need.
The casing itself is sturdily built, making
it travel-friendly, as it ought to be. It could be a little thinner and
lighter, but it's otherwise as portable as it gets. It turns on via a button at
the side, and you access the drive's port through a removable hatch. The hatch
removes completely, however, so be mindful of losing it.
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Seagate GoFlex Satellite
Price $ 191
Info www.seagate.com
Specifications
Capacity: 500GB
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB3.0
Video Formats: H.264, MPEG-4, Motion
JPEG
Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, Apple
Lossless, AllF, WAV
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