Corsair Voyager Air £170
Extend your tablet's storage with
this portable Wi-Fi hard drive
# Like:
Built-in battery and Wi-fi; Can
act as NAS drive; USB 3.0; Good
performance
# Dislike:
No internet sharing from
hotspot; No remote access
Despite Apple recently adding a
128GB option to the iPad 4, storage
space on iOS devices is still a
problem for people who love to
watch HD movies on the go.
The Corsair Voyager Air is a 1TB
external hard drive (there's also a
cheaper 500GB model) that can
connect to your iOS device over Wi-
Fi, letting you watch video, view
photos and open other files stored
on it, leaving the storage on your
device free to be used for apps and
games.
You can load files from your
computer onto the Voyager Air using
a USB port, or by plugging it into
your home network using k
Ethernet port, making it act like
normal network storage, so any
computer can access or load files. It
also acts as a media server, letting
you watch videos on compatible
games consoles and set-top boxes.
Here, we'll concentrate on the iOS
support. This hard drive is most
useful on the go, thanks to its
built-in battery and the ability to
create its own Wi-Fi hotspot.
To access the Voyager Air from your
iPhone or iPad, you'll need to
download the accompanying free app,
which will detect the unit and
connect, provided you're connected
directly to its Wi-Fi hotspot. The
app won't detect the Voyager Air
through your home network, sadly.
Still, it means that wherever you
are, you can just flick on the
Voyager Air's Wi-Fi switch and then
connect to your iPad in the Settings
app.
The battery is rated for around
seven hours, which isn't brilliant,
but should be good enough for most
purposes. The Voyager Air comes
with both a mains and car charger
though, so it isn't a problem to top
it up (but bear in mind that it
doesn't charge from a computer
when connected through the USB 3.0
cable).
Connecting to it is simple, and the
app immediately shows you all the
files and folders stored on it.
There's no media sorting (letting
you just view, say, videos) or
search function, so hi need to
make sure that you organise
everything into tidy folders.
The app isn't the prettiest, but it
does its job well, and up to five
devices can access it at once. Files
and videos that iOS supports natively
can be viewed right in the app, so
you can watch movies, browse
photos and read some documents.
All movies we tried (including high-
quality 1080p videos) played
smoothly with no obvious
deterioration from being streamed;
photos looked good, though the app
struggled with rotation, displaying
some sideways or upside-down.
For files and even video types that
aren't supported by iOS, you can use
the Open With command in Corsair's
app to send these files to a
different app that's capable of
reading them. So you can open MKV
or AVI videos in AVPlayer, open
spreadsheets in Excel, or open text
documents for editing in the likes of
Pages.
*Verdict
There are some other features we
feel the Voyager Air is missing -
internet sharing over Ethernet and
remote access most of all, though
the latter is planned in an update -
but on the whole, it's the most
capable external storage for iOS
we've seen yet. It's not cheap, but
for those who want to have a
library of HD video available for
their device, it's excellent.
Via : techradar
Extend your tablet's storage with
this portable Wi-Fi hard drive
# Like:
Built-in battery and Wi-fi; Can
act as NAS drive; USB 3.0; Good
performance
# Dislike:
No internet sharing from
hotspot; No remote access
Despite Apple recently adding a
128GB option to the iPad 4, storage
space on iOS devices is still a
problem for people who love to
watch HD movies on the go.
The Corsair Voyager Air is a 1TB
external hard drive (there's also a
cheaper 500GB model) that can
connect to your iOS device over Wi-
Fi, letting you watch video, view
photos and open other files stored
on it, leaving the storage on your
device free to be used for apps and
games.
You can load files from your
computer onto the Voyager Air using
a USB port, or by plugging it into
your home network using k
Ethernet port, making it act like
normal network storage, so any
computer can access or load files. It
also acts as a media server, letting
you watch videos on compatible
games consoles and set-top boxes.
Here, we'll concentrate on the iOS
support. This hard drive is most
useful on the go, thanks to its
built-in battery and the ability to
create its own Wi-Fi hotspot.
To access the Voyager Air from your
iPhone or iPad, you'll need to
download the accompanying free app,
which will detect the unit and
connect, provided you're connected
directly to its Wi-Fi hotspot. The
app won't detect the Voyager Air
through your home network, sadly.
Still, it means that wherever you
are, you can just flick on the
Voyager Air's Wi-Fi switch and then
connect to your iPad in the Settings
app.
The battery is rated for around
seven hours, which isn't brilliant,
but should be good enough for most
purposes. The Voyager Air comes
with both a mains and car charger
though, so it isn't a problem to top
it up (but bear in mind that it
doesn't charge from a computer
when connected through the USB 3.0
cable).
Connecting to it is simple, and the
app immediately shows you all the
files and folders stored on it.
There's no media sorting (letting
you just view, say, videos) or
search function, so hi need to
make sure that you organise
everything into tidy folders.
The app isn't the prettiest, but it
does its job well, and up to five
devices can access it at once. Files
and videos that iOS supports natively
can be viewed right in the app, so
you can watch movies, browse
photos and read some documents.
All movies we tried (including high-
quality 1080p videos) played
smoothly with no obvious
deterioration from being streamed;
photos looked good, though the app
struggled with rotation, displaying
some sideways or upside-down.
For files and even video types that
aren't supported by iOS, you can use
the Open With command in Corsair's
app to send these files to a
different app that's capable of
reading them. So you can open MKV
or AVI videos in AVPlayer, open
spreadsheets in Excel, or open text
documents for editing in the likes of
Pages.
*Verdict
There are some other features we
feel the Voyager Air is missing -
internet sharing over Ethernet and
remote access most of all, though
the latter is planned in an update -
but on the whole, it's the most
capable external storage for iOS
we've seen yet. It's not cheap, but
for those who want to have a
library of HD video available for
their device, it's excellent.
Via : techradar
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