Seagate GoFlex Satellite 500GB

With devices such as tablets and smartphones increasingly being used for media consumption, the capacities on offer on these devices do not really evoke glee. Imagine having 100s of HD movies, or 1000s of songs which you may want to carry along and watch or listen to on your tablet or smartphone. The only way to do that was to carry an external HDD, transfer the movies to a laptop, sync your tablet or smartphone with that content and then get only a fraction of it on your device. Pretty time-consuming, and involving lots of cords or wires.

Enter Seagate GoFlex Satellite which is a network attached storage device with a difference. Instead of having a LAN port on the 500 GB drive, the Satellite has an inbuilt WiFi adapter. The concept of the GoFlex Satellite is very simple. Store your data on the drive, then connect your tablet or smartphone wirelessly to the Satellite and stream content.

Design and Build
The Seagate GoFlex Satellite is like any other GoFlex drive with a similar form factor. It does appear thicker than the portable drives due to the in-build wifi and battery addition. The drive has a glossy black finish on the front facing side and a matter black one on the other. There are two indicators – for the USB transfer and WiFi indicator. The edge is lined by a grey plastic body with a power switch on one edge. There is a DC power in switch.
If feels a bit heavier than the GoFlex drives but the build is quite sturdy. The glossy finish is a finger print magnet though.

Features and Performance
The Satellite comes with the GoFlex adapter which connects to the SATA port located on the base of the drive. On the other side of the adapter is a USB 3.0 port. You can also use the FireWire and eSATA GoFlex adapters with the Satellite drive. Data can be transferred to the Satellite drive via the USB port. There is a USB port to power-in switch which can charge your Satellite drive.

The drive section contains a 500 GB drive, a built-in web server and an 802.11 b/g/n WiFi module. Once the data has been put on the drive, a press of the power switch on the drives edge will turn on the streaming capabilities. You can stream content to any iOS devices or Android devices or even your laptops / netbooks which have WiFi connectivity option. The type of data that can be streamed includes video, audio, documents, images, among others.

You will need to download the free My Satellite app for using it on your tablet or smartphone. Else you can open a web browser if you are on a laptop or netbook. The app has sections such as Videos, Photos, Documents, etc.

GoFlex Satellite app user interface

With the iOS and Android devices you will have to disconnect from your current wifi network and connect to the GoFlex Satellite network, so you will lose your internet connection when you are connected to the Satellite drive. The power button switches on the WiFi module within the Satellite. Once you set the GoFlex Satellite network as your WiFi network, then you are connected to the Satellite drive and have access to all its files. By default there is no password set on the drive, but you can enable that by going in the Settings tab. For tablets and smartphones, you will need to download the free GoFlex Media app from the Marketplace. This app is divided into two sections, on the left hand pane you have the various types of file categories such as Videos, Photos, Music, Documents, Folder View among others. On the right hand side you will see the content under each of the folders n the left hand side. So when you click Videos, then on the right hand side you will see all the videos that are there on your Satellite drive. You can also switch to the Folder View to get an overall view of the content within the drive.

The range of the Satellite drive is quite good. We could stream an HD clip smoothly, by having the Satellite and the iPad in the same room, in adjacent rooms and even three rooms away. Ideally, you will have the Satellite drive right next to you or a few feet away at maximum, so there is more than enough range to play videos smoothly, access music files and other documents.

The next test we tried was to access the same file using different devices. So we played an HD clip on the iPad, then tried accessing it on two smartphones. Although the smartphones easily accessed it, we did notice some amount of frame skipping with the smartphones, but the buffering on the iPad was flawless. Standard definition content (a 480p clip) played smoothly on all three devices. This was an extreme case we were testing, as it is rare that the same clip will be accessed on three different devices in the same room.

If you try to access the web browsers on these devices which are connected to the GoFlex Satellite network, then you will see a web interface of the same UI that you see on its app.

If you use a laptop or a netbook to access the Satellite drive, then it tends to download the file first and then play it. This is a bit disappointing, as downloading a full HD movie over the air takes quite a while.

While listening to music on you iPad for instance, the current tracks opens in a new popup window. You can click on Done and come out of the GoFlex Media app and maybe read an iBook or write some notes on the side. But if you open some game puzzle app for instance, the music will stop playing.

You can also download content from the Satellite drive to your local device. But uploading content from your device to the satellite drive is not possible.

The car adapter which is bundled is great for charging your Satellite drive, to keep the family entertained on your long drives out of the city.

VerdictSeagate GoFlex Satellite is a great companion to your tablets and smartphones which have a limited storage capacity. The 500 gigs of the Satellite are more than enough to carry your whole music and some of the HD movie collection on the go. With around 4 hours of charge time, USB 3.0 interface, the Satellite drive is ideal for those wanting to consume content on the go, but have limited space to have all that content on their tablets or smartphones. Pricing of Rs. 14,500 though is ridiculous for a 500 GB version. We would advise you to wait till the pricing drops to sensible levels.

On the whole a wonderful product with bad pricing. Under Rs. 10,000 this is a good investment for your entertainment needs.

ContactSeagate India
Email: sandeep_joshi@melcole.com
Website: www.seagate.com
Price: Rs. 14,500