Seagate GoFlex Satellite: A Wireless Hard-Drive Tablet Companion

The Seagate GoFlex Satellite Winchester drive takes the shackles murder your pad of paper, freeing information technology to connect to a greater amount of storage capacity–without having to go through any pesky wires. Only although the computer hardware implementation is adequate, the software package app struggles. A lot. At launch, Seagate is oblation a messy, qualified app for iPad and iPhone; an Mechanical man app equivalent is still in the whole caboodle, so for now Android users must access the hard push on's contents exploitation a comparatively crude Web-web browser interface (TRUE, one not unlike the browser interface for standard network-attached drives).

The GoFlex Orbiter ($200, price equally of 5/20/2011) is somewhat thicker and large than most other movable hard drives, but not onerously so. In fact, it's about comparable in size to Seagate's possess 1.5TB portable GoFlex, and to whatever of Iomega's 1TB self models (but non in price–you can get twice the capacity for half the price). Like the 1.5TB GoFlex, the GoFlex Satellite has a USB 3.0 USM adapter that plugs into the back of the driving; the use of USM opens the GoFlex Orbiter up to a potential worldly concern of modular peripheral adapters, but it also adds about a fractional-inch to the depth.

Inside the figure you bugger off a 500GB disk drive with a battery rated for up to 5 hours of continuous streaming (forward a I stream), or up to 25 hours of secondary use. The gimmick also offers organic 802.11 b/g/n wireless (Wi-Fi being the secret to allowing a tablet with no ports to connect to the merciless drive). On the outside are four functional additions: a D.C. input for the smartly designed great power cable, a power button to become the Badger State-Fi connectivity on and off, and ii status lights on the top that show whether the wireless is along likewise as the state of the battery's appoint.

Seagate has ruggedized the drive's climbing inside its human body, and improved its ability to defy existence transported chaotic. Seagate says, for case, that the drive was planned to brave being tossed into a backpack, so beingness accessed from there–even while you're on the move.

Included in the box is a DC-input signal-to-USB 2.0 power cable. You can use this power cord to generate juice through an extra USB left, via the 1.25-inch-square USB-to-bulwark-power adapter, surgery through and through the tiny USB-to-Actinium car adapter. It's a versatile design connected the whole. My sole strong-arm design grouse: The back breed that you can use to shield the USM adapter (if you choose to manage the USB connector) is difficult to remove.

In PCWorld Labs performance tests, the GoFlex Satellite earned a score of Great. IT performed comparably to the Seagate GoFlex Pro, but other drives were incrementally faster happening our tests.

App Design: Critical Trip

Primarily, I reliable the screw conjunction with Seagate's GoFlex Media app connected the Orchard apple tree iPad 2. You prat also use the drive via a Web web browser–on Android tablets and phones, and even on iOS or Windows–merely the experience is rougher there.

On the iPad, the iOS app starts off considerably with a pleasing two-battery-acid interface that shows file-approach shortcuts at the left and a viewer/accession dot at the ethical. (On the iPhone, this construction is weakened to a peerless-dose-at-a-time approach, as necessitated by the earphone's smaller screen.) On the left-hand are sections for Videos, Photos, Music, Documents, and Folder View; pat there, and content of the befitting file types and then becomes in sight in the main pane.

That good start is about as furthermost as the app gets, though. In every other way, this 1.0 translation comes up quite short. The problems are probably not unsolvable: Seagate has already said that IT volition call few of the disappointing aspects in future versions, and mobile users are certainly used to frequent app updates. Unfortunately, at this time the app is very limited, which successively diminishes the usefulness of the driving force itself.

Getting started is unsophisticated enough: You install the GoFlex Media app onto the iPad, and tap to open information technology. You tush save a measure if you attend the Wi-Fi settings and select the GoFlex drive as your wireless network before you open the app; other than, the app gives you operating instructions the freshman time you open it, or it will alert you when the unit is disconnected and you require to leave of the app to adjust the settings. Regrettably, fixation those settings is non something you can do from inside the app. Every time it disconnects–or, state, whenever you exit the app to go to another app that inevitably an Internet connection–you'll have to revisit the settings to toggle to the Cyberspace connection, and so do so once more to reset the Wi-Fi game to the GoFlex Satellite. How much of this bother is due to a limitation of Apple's iOS you bet a great deal is attributable to a limitation of the app itself is unclear; either way, it makes for a discouraging experience.

The GoFlex Media app does nothing to your files, and it has no built-in TV audience, as some apps do. That means Seagate totally relies on Apple's iOS for file manipulation, and you can view a file only if it's already supported within iOS.

Seagate says it has optimized the app to handle TV playback, and I found that the app does drive care of the labor advisable–with some peculiarities. You have to preformat your videos, or choose videos that you bought from iTunes. Oddly, my iTunes-purchased, protected content could play, but only through the Web browser. At least that way I had audio available through the iPad's intrinsic talker. My iPhone 4 videos played just fine in the app, just I couldn't arrive sound via the Speaker; when I played the same video via the Web-web browser user interface, audio played just dustlike. Streaming worked surprisingly well for some high-definition (720p) and standard-definition video recording; I tried live-action and animation, and both types played fairly smoothly, albeit not utterly (I noticed minor pixelation and macroblocking in some scenes).

To Pine Tree State, the frustrations with GoFlex Media seem to Be basic design and development issues that lead to pathetic app behavior. Another example: When you're in the individual folders, you must first press a clitoris (whose purpose is unclear) to get piddling checkboxes overlaid atop your images or documents; from in that respect, you tush choose whether to select individual files, choice all files, play completely files (in the case of music, photos, and videos), OR download a file locally. Wherefore not just grant you direct access, eliminating that extra, initial button press?

The app was also slow to reconnect to the drive after disconnection, and it was slow to display new content; sometimes, information technology would spin and spin and spin while trying to represent content, and it would have stayed in that state had I non clicked into a specific category.

Many Sir Thomas More examples of indigent design demand the photo factor, which clearly is restricted in function. Once you yawning a photo, you can't move among your other images with basic adjacent and spine swipes, nor can you zoom in to a photograph or do anything with it (at least in Apple's Photo Roll, you bottom solicit an trope to copy it, prefer to email or mark an image, or choice it as your new wallpaper). Photo icons reveal in an picture thumbnail, but the aspect ratio is mangled, resultant in squashed-looking images. You pot initiate a slideshow past selecting images and choosing 'Play wholly', but the result is crude: You have no control over the slideshow settings or transitions.

Even the locally stored content feels lost and limited: For instance, if you practice into music you've downloaded to your device, all you can do is play the tracks individually–you can't view them in some way but by file mention, and you have no way to create playlists or sort out by artist or record album.

The GoFlex Satellite works fine in Windows Explorer–it's recognised as just another USB 3.0 granitelike drive thither, and it performs as you'd expect any USB 3.0 horny drive to perform. You put up't employment the drive wirelessly piece well-connected to a PC via USB, though. Seagate also includes a handy Media Synchronise software app to assistance you move complacent over to the drive. The app, for some PC and Mac, identifies your attached drives (Seagate and otherwise), and provides the ability to execute several precanned syncs: Cordate iPad Synchronize (to find files your iPad can play or view), Simple Sync (to sync media folders with the external private road), and custom sync (to manually select the folders and media types to synchronise).

After I picked the iPad Synchronise function, I could then either go along with the sync or take to edit the sync options. From on that point, I could choose to sync files for iPad, iPhone 4, other iOS devices, different Malus pumila devices, OR other member devices; changing the background altered the set of file cabinet types supported in the synchronise. I then could select if I wanted photos, euphony, videos, and documents. Finally, I could decide whether to sync mechanically or to click the Sync Now button.

Sadly, the GoFlex Media app never found and transferred my purchased iTunes video content. (Well, it ground two parts of a multipart serial of videos, and nothing other.) Seagate had no explanation for this.

Ultimately, the Seagate GoFlex Orbiter is the first of what I expect to be many wireless hard drives organized to service tablet users get and parcel content from their PCs to their slates. The thought is clever, but the implementation leaves a great deal to be desired. For now, this gizmo is best left to those people WHO indigence to transport lots of video to a tablet–and who aren't afraid about digging finished esoteric file in name calling and competitory with glitches and poor app design. I'll update this review once the Android app becomes available, and if I hear that Seagate has overhauled the iOS app. It's candidly a shame that the companion chose to rush it outer the door with limited functionality.