Irvine, Calif. — Western Digital introduced Wednesday the first Wi-Fi-enabled version of its portable My Passport hard-drive series.
The My Passport Wireless allows saving, accessing and sharing stored content over a wireless connection with any smartphone, tablet, computer or similar device.
Western Digital said the unit has a wide variety of applications, from professionals in the field to families taking road trips.
To quickly transfer large amounts of data, the My Passport Wireless drives also offer a high-speed USB 3.0 wired connection. The drive broadcasts its own wireless network that allows up to eight devices to connect at the same time and access any content stored on the drive.
They are available at leading retailers now and at the WD store in 500GB ($129 suggested retail), 1TB ($179) or 2TB ($219) capacities.
The high-volume drives will store thousands of songs and photos, and hundreds of hours of movies, for playback on smartphones, tablets, notebooks, cameras and other devices.
The drive is equipped to handle Wireless 802.11n with MIMO technology for quick access to files.
The technology allows streaming up to four HD videos at one time.
A built-in rechargeable battery provides up to six hours of continuous streaming and up to 20 hours of standby power.
Users of the My Passport Wireless drive also have access to WD’s My Cloud mobile app for iOS or Android mobile devices. The app allows easily connecting to a My Passport Wireless drive for simple product setup, as well as intuitive navigation, sharing and playback of the drive’s content.
The app also helps unify all of a user’s content under a single app and user interface, providing access to content on the My Passport Wireless drive, the WD My Cloud family of personal Cloud storage, and on such major public Cloud services as Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive from just one app.
