There are certain things – tech accessories to be exact – in life that are essential for day-to-day use. We can’t live without portable storage these days, and we have at least one USB flash drive with us. For those who wants larger storage will have to settle for the larger external hard disks. Traditional external hard disks require a USB cable to connect to a computer, but never to a phone – but that’s about to change.
Introducing the WD My Passport Wireless. As the name states, it’s a wireless hard disk with some extremely handy features.
The Passport Wireless comes in a rather huge box – and has a flap to reveal the hard disk.
The box overall is rather clean and doesn’t have much to see other than some specifications and some other description on how to use the product.
Digging out the content, there is a huge hard plastic shell that holds everything inside. And oh – this is not the frustrating clamshell type of plastic, it’s just a front and back piece snapped on together. There’s a latch at one of the corner to open it up.
The clamshell contains quite a number of things – a quick start guide, a technical support and warranty guide, a charger, some plug converters for different plug types, a USB 3.0 Micro B (simply micro USB 3.0) and the hard disk itself.
[nextpage title=”Physical tour”]
The Passport Wireless is much more bigger than any other external hard disks – and somehow it feels like the thickness of a 3.5-inch hard disk.
The hard disk has two indicators at the top – one for power and another for WiFi. The two indicators can change into a variety of colours – and these are the only status indicators that will tell what’s going on with the hard disk.
At the top side of the Passport Wireless are two buttons are a USB Micro B port. There is a power button and also a WPS button – which stands for WiFi Protected Setup.
There is something hidden at the left side of the Passport Wireless – a SD card slot. This is a full-sized SD card slot, so to transfer stuff between microSD cards, a converter is needed.
[nextpage title=”Features”]I have to say this – this is the first time ever that I’m using a wireless hard disk. The first one ever to have something cool – an actual life saver for photographers on the go, either travelling or on a work trip.
The WD My Passport Wireless is feature packed, and it’s designed with the users in mind. However, I had some issues with how the Passport Wireless works. There is only two physical buttons and two more LED indicators, and a slew of features.
The biggest issue I have with the Passport Wireless is this – there are a lot of features on this hard disk, and those two buttons can do everything, depending on the combination to trigger said feature. There is also an app for both iOS and Android, but is rather confusing and not something that I’d like to use, but it’s the only thing that can control all the special features on the Passport Wireless without using the buttons.
I suggest you to either memorize the LED indications and list of functions it can do with certain button presses or print it out and stick it at the back of the Passport Wireless. Those features are extremely useful, and I honestly do recommend anyone who is interested to get the WD My Passport Wireless to first read the manual.
And hey – the WD My Passport Wireless be connected in two different ways – connect it directly from your devices to the hard disk’s WiFi as Hotspot mode, or connect the hard disk to home WiFi and treat it as a wireless NAS. Also in NAS mode, it can be used as a WiFi repeater too.
Setup process
It’s a one-time-only process required by the Passport Wireless to setup its WiFi name and password, and to connect to your home WiFi network. There are two different ways to do this – one with a browser, or use the WD My Cloud app for Android – also available for iOS devices.
Starting off with the browser setup process, it’s pretty much the basic stuff, like the My Cloud app. Further settings however can be done by using the browser, such as changing administrator password, configuring how the WiFi works, optimizing performance or battery, etc. More so when the amount of storage used by types of files can be seen on a pie chart.
Speak of the app first, it works pretty okay – like I said, the app is feature packed, and the lack of buttons made it quite difficult to use. The WD My Cloud app lets you copy all of the contents from the SD card to the hard disk, but there is no direct access to the SD card for browsing or to copy only one or two files.
On Network under Windows, the My Passport Wireless is shown to be a standalone computer. Accessing the Passport Wireless shows two things – the built-in hard disk storage and the attached SD card separately.
“Bingo!“, I thought to myself. I don’t have to copy all of my files from the SD card to the Passport Wireless before accessing the any of the files – effectively working as a wireless SD card reader. However, as said earlier, the SD card wouldn’t work this way if accessed using the WD My Cloud app. there is another workaround – access the hard disk wirelessly via Estrong File Manager using its Network connection, and it’ll show everything like what Windows can see.
[nextpage title=”Speed”]Let’s be honest here. The Passport Wireless works perfect. Using the awesome USB 3.0 interface, a speed beyond 100MB/s can be achieved without a sweat.
As for wireless speeds, it can get very complex depending on what environment the connection is working in. Sometimes, it can be really quick, but sometimes it can be really bad. My tests averaged out at a 4~6MB/s file transfer speed, no thanks to my house’s construction. Again, this slow speed is my fault and not WD’s fault. It’s all under my own hardware limitations.
Though fret not – I was able to stream 1080p movies (4,831 Kbps bitrate) through the WD My Cloud app to my smartphone without any jittering.
For a 1TB external drive though, I’m impressed with the USB 3.0 performance. For wireless transfers, I’ll have to say that it’s perfect for smaller files, somewhere below or around 100MB would be suitable, but anything near to a gigabyte would take quite a long time to transfer. Then again, who would want to transfer few gigabytes of videos wirelessly?
Also, it seems to have some heat issues, with its plastic chassis going up to about 38 degrees on idle mode.
Speaking of speed, there is one thing that gets on my nerve whenever I use the Passport Wireless. The time it takes to get ready when the power button is pressed is just way too long. Same goes to its turn off speed. It takes 20 seconds or so just to turn on, and another 10 seconds or so just to turn off.
[nextpage title=”Battery”]The WD My Passport Wireless packs a huge 3,400mAh battery – more than most of the flagship Android smartphones these days – and it is one of the reason for this Passport Wireless’s bulk and weight.
The charger is rated at the typical 5V, 2A (10 watts), and takes about 2 to 3 hours to charge completely. And hey, the charger has a very smart design which I think everyone should take a few design cues from WD.
Back to the battery life. Leaving the WD My Passport Wireless turned on and periodically checking on the battery life showed how quick the battery levels dropped. It can however last about 3 to 4 hours continuously on performance optimized settings. Now that’s impressive.
[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]
The WD My Passport Wireless is a product aimed at those who want files on the go without bringing any cables. Photographers will truly enjoy this capability, but I can see how backpackers will enjoy too – one 8GB SD card to rule it all by constantly offloading all the pictures to the WD My Passport Wireless. Don’t even have to carry that many SD cards too.
I like the minimalist design and the inclusion of a SD card slot, but the things those two buttons can be are beyond what I can memorize, which makes the user manual very useful. I wish the battery life would be a little better, and maybe a smaller size in later generation. An improvement in the booting up and shutting down speeds would be great too. Maybe NFC for quick connection?
I definitely recommend you to buy it, more so if you’re a photographer or a traveler who brings around an external hard disk and a camera.
Where to buy
You can get it for RM699 right here at Lazada!
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