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Western Digital My Passport Wireless 2TB

Western Digital My Passport Wireless 2TB Review – For us photographers, there is barely anything as important as our cameras, and the only thing that comes close is our storage devices. When I first found out that I’d be reviewing a wireless hard drive, I was very curious. I’d heard of such devices, but never tried one out. What struck me about it was the fact that I’d be able to transfer images on the go.

Dual Advantage

The WD My Passport Wireless features USB 3.0, an embedded Wifi network and an inbuilt battery. It also includes support for a dual-stream setup of 802.11n Wifi that gives it faster speeds, and an integrated SD card slot further simplifies things for those looking for hassle-free transfers.

Using the passport

Western Digital My Passport Wireless 2TB

When you connect the drive to a computer, it works as a regular external hard drive, and when you are running it on battery, it becomes a wireless mobile media server. Basically, what you can do is transfer data to and from the hard drive via tablets and smartphones, using a WD My Cloud app. You can also transfer data through a Wi-Fi enabled camera. The device can support up to eight concurrent Wifi clients for data sharing, and upto four clients for HD streaming.

Your Workflow through the App

The WD My Cloud app acts as the interface for file transfers, streaming, browsing through folders and so on. All you need to do is install the app from the Play Store or the Apple App Store and connect the hard drive via the app. You can now shift folders from your phone to the hard drive or playback media stored on the hard drive, or use the phone as a giant screen when you want to transfer images from a WiFi enabled camera to the hard drive.

However, you cannot use the app to browse through images on an SD card. You will need to transfer the contents of the card before you can view the photos. This is a little inconvenient, since you might want to quickly preview photos before backing them up.

Streams Only What Your Mobile Device Can

The My Cloud app allows you to stream only the file formats that are supported by your mobile device itself. For instance, for .MKV files, you will need to use a third party mobile app. The same goes for a Word document, Excelsheet or PDF. The app doesn’t have any inbuilt support for these file types at all.

What We Think

The 2TB version of the hard drive is available at a price of USD 219.99, however, the MRP of the 1TB variant being sold in India is also Rs. 13,000. This pricing strategy has left us a little confused. While the hard drive is a nifty piece of equipment, it isn’t classleading. The app’s interface has a few bugs that need to be smoothened out, and the transfer speeds from a mobile device to the hard drive are not exactly blazing fast.

However, for relatively convenient transfers, compact size and a huge storage capacity, the device certainly shows a lot of potential, and is definitely worth a look. But if you consider that Western Digital has entered the game quite late, and that its competitors have similar products that are priced inexpensively, the hard drive ends up seeming like a costly toy, albeit a relatively efficient one.