Introduction
In a nutshell, the Seagate Wireless Plus is a mobile wireless media streamer. It has 1TB of capacity and you can use it to store just about anything for sharing - movies, music, photos or documents. It then broadcasts a Wi-Fi signal so that surrounding devices with Wi-Fi capability can access the content that’s stored on it. This is a good means of expanding storage on devices with limited options, such as iPhones and iPads, which don’t have expandable memory card slots.
On the left is the new Seagate Wireless Plus and on the right is the older GoFlex Satellite.
The Seagate Wireless Plus is the successor to the Seagate GoFlex Satellite, which we reviewed in May last year. On first impressions, it is noticeably thinner than the GoFlex Satellite. Additionally, the new Wireless Plus has the same design as the new Backup Plus drives and so has a brushed aluminum front panel. However, it is available only in gray, a color exclusive to the Wireless Plus.
A standard on Seagate portable hard drives these days is their Universal Storage Module, which allows users to change the interface of the drives via interchangeable adapters.
Elsewhere, the new Wireless Plus also comes with Seagate’s unique interchangeable interface adapters or USM (Universal Storage Module). This means that you can swap out the default USB 3.0 adapter for optional Thunderbolt and FireWire adapters (sold separately). For the PC-DIY folks, you might also want to note that without the adapter, it can hook up to a system directly via SATA data and power cables.
Under the hood, the Wireless Plus now has double the capacity of the old GoFlex Satellite with 1TB of storage. Seagate also claims a 10-hour battery life on a single charge, which is double that of the GoFlex Satellite. Otherwise, the two drives are similar in that they both support Apple AirPlay, and DLNA streaming to compatible gaming consoles, media players and Smart TVs. Speaking of Smart TVs, Seagate says that they are working on an app that will let Wireless Plus stream directly to Samsung Smart TVs.
Setup
Startup is a straightforward process. There’s a single power button on the side of the Wireless Plus device, just beside the Wireless and Power LED indicators, which you must press to activate the device. The Power LED indicator should come on and once the Wireless indicator turns to a solid blue, this means the device is ready.
The drive can be accessed via the new Seagate Media app (available on iOS and Android) or through the respective device's web browser. But before beginning to stream content, it is advisable to do some basic setup first. The first thing you would want to do is to set a password to restrict unauthorized access to the drive. Next, the Wireless Plus drive can act as a Wi-Fi bridge, so it is best to pair the drive up with an existing Wi-Fi connection first so that you can still retain Internet connectivity whilst connected to the Wireless Plus. The Seagate Wireless Plus supports Wireless 802.11 b/g/n standards, so you shouldn't have problems pairing it with older notebooks, tablets or smartphones.
You can add content to the drive using the USB 3.0 adapter and transfers speeds are what you’d expect from a USB 3.0 drive. It took us 18.4 seconds to transfer a 1.7GB movie from our storage testbed to the Wireless Plus, one of the quicker timings we’ve recorded in our labs.
Experience
Like the GoFlex Satellite, once you are connected to the Wireless Plus’ WiFi network, contents on the drive can be accessed either via a web browser or the new Seagate Media app. The web and app interface are highly similar and both are equally straightforward and easy to use.
The web interface looks fresh and modern and is easy to navigate.
The Seagate Media app on iOS is equally easy to use. The app can recognize different content types and will automatically sort them.
Both web and app interface are also pretty intelligent in that it will automatically sort your content according to its predetermined categories - Videos, Photos, Music and Documents. If you have MP3 music, it will even group them according to Albums, Songs, Artists and Genre, which is convenient.
The Seagate Wireless Plus drive can stream content to up to eight devices simultaneously, but if you are streaming HD video content, the device has only sufficient throughput to support a maximum of three devices. When our playback device is in close proximity (which is what the device was designed for), we've found streaming performance to be good and videos would play smoothly and quite quickly.
If the Seagate Media app encounters a file with an unsupported format, it will offer you the option of downloading it onto your device whereby you can then open it with a third-party player.
Unfortunately, the Wireless Plus is beset by the same problems that faced its predecessor in that it is only a media streamer not a decoder. What this means is that it will only play video files that are supported by your device natively. If you are accessing the Wireless Plus using a PC or Mac notebook, that’s not such a big issue - files would play so long as you have the necessarily codecs installed. But if you are streaming video to an iOS device, that means only a very small list of video formats that are supported. If you have a video file with an unsupported video format, the SeagateMedia app lets you download it directly to your phone so that you can open it with a third-party app like VLC or OPlayer, but that kind of defeats the purpose since the Wireless Plus is supposed to carry your supplementary media files and not burden your existing playback device. Alternatively, another workaround is to first transcode the video file in question to a supported format and then transfer it to the Wireless Plus.
All in all, the Wireless Plus works well enough, but it does have some quirks that are worth noting. For instance, it will continue to stream when charging via the DC-in but not via USB. Consequently, it cannot stream content when it is plugged into a computer.
Conclusion
In closing, the Wireless Plus can best be summed up as a slightly updated take on the older GoFlex Satellite drive. The Wireless Plus was easy to setup and it works without a hitch. It also features some new improvements such as a larger storage capacity and improved battery life. Unfortunately, we are disappointed that Seagate did not take the opportunity to rectify the limitations of the GoFlex Satellite - most glaringly, the lack of video format support on iOS devices. If the app was made smarter to be aware of relevant third-party apps and work with them to playback necessary content, that would have been much preferred. Given the closely regulated iOS ecosystem, it's not difficult for Seagate to design their app accordingly. Otherwise, they should consider having native media playback support built in the app.
The Seagate Wireless Plus works as advertised. However, it is only an incremental update to the old GoFlex Satellite and doesn't address its predecessor's biggest problems.
The Wireless Plus is priced similarly to the GoFlex Satellite at S$299 and that means it costs considerably more than a regular 1TB portable hard drive. Whether the premium is justified depends very much on your personal needs, but the Wireless Plus works just as advertised and is a great way to share content wirelessly on the go with other wireless devices in the vicinity.
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