Seagate Wireless Plus

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.

Design and Features
The Wireless Plus follows the design ID of the Seagate Backup Plus, which means the drive itself is a grey slab of plastic measuring about 0.78 by 3.5 by 5 inches (HWD). It's a bit larger than the Backup Plus, in order to accommodate the radio for the built-in Wi-Fi, battery, and for an auxiliary charging port. The drive comes formatted for NTFS (Windows native), but you can download a NTFS read utility for Macs from Seagate's website or use the installer included on the drive. The drive comes with a USM adapter for USB 3.0, so you can connect the drive directly to your laptop or desktop for quick transfers. USM is Seagate's proprietary connector that uses a recessed SATA port. If you have older USM connectors from drives like the older Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage (500GB) ($199.99), you can connect the Wireless Plus to FireWire 800, eSATA, or Thunderbolt ports.

Since the drive uses a 2.5-inch laptop-style mechanism, the Wireless Plus can be placed easily in a pocket or zippered pouch in your commute bag. The drive comes with a cover to protect the USM connector when it's not in use. The cover snaps into place after you remove the USB 3.0 adapter. It would have been nice to have the port cover built in, since it's easy to lose a small piece of flat plastic, but it's one of the only minor nits we can find with this drive.

The Wireless Plus comes as a single 1TB model, which is double that of the older GoFlex Satellite. This will let you carry several hundred HD movies or thousands of MP3s, AAC, photos, and other files with you everywhere. This is useful if you have a 64GB device like an iPad, but it's even more useful if you have a family with basic devices like that 8GB iPhone 3GS that you gave to your son after your contract ran out. The Wireless Plus can serve up to three HD video streams smoothly, but can service even more users if some are streaming music or SD videos. It would be a great companion for your family on a train ride, plane ride, or multi-state road trip.

The Wireless Plus can route the Internet by connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Basically, the Wireless Plus is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, and your tablets, phones, and laptops are connected to the Wireless Plus, which is acting as a router. You'll manage the Internet connection through the Seagate media app on your phone or tablet. When your devices are connected via the Wireless Plus, all of your Internet apps (browser, Facebook, Spotify, etc.) should work fine. The one thing that won't work in this situation is your tablet or phone's internal cellular modem, unless the Wireless Plus is connected to the cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. If you have an iPhone or other phones on one of the older non-hotspot data plans, you'll have to disconnect from the Wireless Plus and its library to surf the Internet. Thus, the best-case scenario for travel is to have the Wireless Plus connected to a 3G/4G hotspot like a MiFi, and your family's laptops and devices connected to the Wireless Plus.

The Wireless Plus has its own built-in Wi-Fi router, which is set as an open connection by default. You can setup WPA security on the router, so you won't have to worry about strangers sharing your personal files. You can search for and find the Seagate Media app in the iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon Apps for Android stores, which gives Android tablets and phones, iOS devices, and Kindle Fire tablets simple access to the media on your Wireless Plus drive. Media files are presented in folder format (like on the first version of the GoFlex Satellite and Seagate Media app), but the Seagate Media app automatically catalogs and lists all the video, music, and readable documents in separate tabs as well. This makes it easy to find the movie you want to watch, instead of trying to dig through poorly marked folders. The current version of the Seagate Media app catalogs the media files on your drive and caches info like album art, so you don't constantly have to wait for the drive to show you its offerings. Populating the drive with media is as easy as dragging and dropping files on the drive, but if you want a little more automatic service, Seagate's Media Sync program on Mac or Windows will search for and copy media files to the Wireless Plus (or older GoFlex Satellite) drive. The Media Sync app can manage several drives, with different setting for each drive. You can set the sync to only copy iPad-compatible files, for example.

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.

Performance
The Wireless Plus is a battery saving drive, so it's not designed for performance. It took most of the day for us to transfer a 400GB iTunes library to the drive over USB 2.0. When we tested the Wireless Plus on USB 3.0 with PCMark, it returned respectable scores at PCMark 05 (6,640 points) and PCMark 7 (1531 points). We also got a quick 16 second time on our drag and drop test with our 1.22 GB test folder. Seagate claims a battery life of 10 hours serving a single user with SD video, but your battery life will vary depending on the files and number of users.

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.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.

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