SYDNEY: Seagate has launched its different items in Australia with a view to lead the market. These items included with Seven, Mirror, Rugged, Personal Cloud and more which are earlier shown in the 2015 Consumer Electronic Show.
This select range offers a selection of seductive benefits, from the slim and svelte Seagate Seven drive through to the mesmerising LaCie Mirror, from the Rugged LaCie RAID-capable model through to Seagate’s cloud nine of data nirvana with two Personal Cloud models and more.
iTWire was at the Australian launch of Seagate’s new range by Sam Zavaglia, Senior Field Applications Engineer, Seagate Technology, with the full launch video embedded below – plenty more detail continues thereafter, please read on!
Seagate Seven
First up is Seagate’s Seven portable drive. Nothing to do with being made by the seventh son of a seventh son’s storage engineer, Seven instead refers to the drive and its enclosure’s depth, which is deeply shallow at just 7mm.
Looking for all the world like a bare metal drive but without the protruding bits of motherboard circuitry, it is the world’s slimmest way to carry 500GB of spinning magnetic media, complete with USB 3.0 port and powerful yet simple industrial design.
With its all-metal enclosure made ‘entirely of steel highlights’, and its snazzily braided USB 3.0 cable, the drive will turn heads with its style, but at $189 you are paying a pretty premium penny for what is albeit very slick storage.
An an example, Toshiba sells a 2TB 2.5-inch drive that is dramatically thicker but for only $129 at Officeworks, so while the Seagate Seven isn’t for everyone, its design certainly puts a new spin on the spinning storage story.
Full details on the Seagate Seven can be seen here.
Seagate Wireless
Then there’s the Seagate Wireless, also priced at $189. It’s the latest addition to Seagate’s range of wireless drives (with the previous model looking more like standard portable drives in sizes of 500GB to 2TB), designed to stream HD videos to up to three devices at the same time, freeing up space on tablets and smartphones and coming with 6 hours of battery life according to the website, although Zavaglia in the video presentation said 8 hours.
While it is wireless, it only has a USB 2.0 port rather than USB 3.0 – clearly this is meant to be a mass market product that doesn’t need the superfast speeds of USB 3.0 connectivity, which must be saving Seagate some money.
To get access to the data wirelessly with ease, you can download the free Seagate Media app on iOS (7.x and 8.x), Android (4.x and 5.x), Kindle Fire HD, Windows 8.x and even Windows RT tablets which clearly aren’t dead yet even if Microsoft isn’t going to release a Windows 10 update for RT devices.
However, there is more – the Seagate Media app can actually cast your content to a Chromecast, LG Smart TV or a Roku player with ease when on the same network, but unlike the Personal Cloud devices below, there’s no mention of Apple TV.
You can also use the drive, presumably in conjunction with the app, to ‘offload or back up full-resolution pictures and video from your smartphone or tablet using the Seagate Media app.’
As a firmly consumer focused product (that any business user could take advantage of if they wanted), it naturally also comes in a range of ‘vibrant colours’ – lime green, cool blue, slate grey, fire-engine red and white.
Seagate Personal Cloud and Personal Cloud 2-Bay
Before we get to the two new LaCie products, let’s have a look at Seagate’s two new ‘Personal Cloud’ devices.
These are billed as providing ‘the accessibility of cloud storage with the peace of mind that
However the video above, at the 16:41 mark, shows you can cast to an Apple TV as well, and shows an Apple TV in the image, so I’m not sure why the website doesn’t indicate this also – perhaps it is only from iOS devices which can stream content to Apple TVs anyway.
The single-drive Personal Cloud is available in sizes of 3TB for $299, 4TB for $349 and 5TB for $469.
