WD My Passport Wireless Review

A few months back, WD introduced their new My Passport Wireless Hard drive in Indian market. I spent a lot of time with it before writing my personal experience, I know it’s late now and there are reviews probably everywhere but I really wanted to share my honest opinion with you guys, so without wasting time, here we go.

Unboxing

So when we open the box, you’ll find the WD My Passport Wireless Hard Drive on one side, a 10W adapter (5V@2A) and a USB 3.0 cable which is around 2 feet in length with Male-A to Micro-B connectors. The USB cable can also be used for connecting the hard drive to the computer for data transfer and charging as well. Other than this, you’ll find a bunch of booklets and starter guides inside the box. To get a better idea of what all you get inside the box, see the video embed below.

A Look into WD My Passport Wireless 

Design

At first glance, the WD My Passport Hard Drive looks bulky and heavier and it is heavier than standard portable hard drives, maybe because of the extra space taken by the SD card slot and extra machinery which make the wireless connection possible. On one side of the hard drive, you’ll find a Power button, a 3.0 USB connector and a multi-purpose button, which can be used to check the battery status and also allows you to connect to different Wi-Fi clients. Also note, the battery status check button also works when the device is turned off.

The front of the Hard drive contains LED lights which shows the Wi-Fi connection strength and Battery status, depending on if you’ve pressed the battery stats button or not. On one side you’ll find an SD card slot which can be used to transfer all data from your SD card to your hard drive without connecting it with computer. Rest of the design is pretty simple.

The dimensions of the hard drive are: 5 Inched long, 3.4 Inches Wide and 1.2 inches thick (1TB & 2TB version). The 500GB variant is approximately an Inch thick. Under the hood, My Passport Wireless contains a 2.5” 2TB WD Green WD20NPVX Hard drive which runs at 5,200 RPM and has 8MB Buffer.

Performance

To test the performance of WD My Passport Wireless Hard Drive, we ran a couple of benchmark tests on it and below were the results we got when we ran CrystalDiskInfo on it. For the record, the below results are the outcome of tests which were performed on 2TB variant of My Passport Wireless.

When we connected the My Passport Wireless to computer using USB Cable.

When the drive was connected wirelessly to the computer, the transfer speed was till unbelievable fast and stable. Unfortunately we lost the screenshot evidence of the Wireless tests but the above tests can give you an idea of it.

The FTP support is something which I really like about this hard drive and I’m sure that this feature will be adored a lot by photographers who want to save their SD card data to cloud automatically. My Passport Wireless acts like a DLNA media server and if you insert an SD card into it, the data will automatically get transferred onto the drive.

One thing which disappointed me was the battery life of My Passport Wireless, though it contains a 3,400 mAh battery, I found that the battery runs out quicker than I expected. According to WD, the battery is capable of running your drive for as long as 6 hours with continuous usage. At standby, My Passport Wireless lasts a bit longer than 21 hours to a day.

Dedicated App

To make this Hard Drive accessible from your smartphone or tablet, you’ll need to get a specially designed app onto your phone/tablet. The Western Digital’s My Cloud app is available on Google Play Store and iTunes store. This app will help you access advanced settings etc. The app is compatible with many different WD cloud storage products, including My Passport Wireless and so far the app performance was good and had no issues whatsoever.

Availability & Price

The second thing which I didn’t like about this hard drive (apart from the battery) is the price. WD My Passport Wireless is priced at Rs.11,000 for 500 GB variant, Rs.13,000 for 1TB variant and Rs.17,500 for 2TB variant. The Drive is available at stores as well as online.

Verdict

Apart from the high price and average battery performance, My Passport Wireless sure has something which still attracts consumers. From my experience with it, I definitely enjoyed streaming movies onto your smartphone or tablet. Transferring data from the comfort of my couch and of course transferring my content from SD card to cloud just by inserting it in the slot provided. The dedicated app is very helpful and My Passport Wireless hard drive will be a great device for photographers and people who never want to lose their data ever again. Though it is expensive but it’s still a great device to have around.

SHARE

About Jimmie Luthra

Jimmie Luthra is a Mariner, Tech enthusiast, Blogger and Gadget reviewer. He is fond of technology and is usually found playing with some piece of tech. He is also a Guitarist, Music lover & fitness freak.