Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro

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The My Passport Wireless Pro improves on its predecessor in many ways and has more bits than any wireless hard drive to date.

Western Digital’s My Passport Wireless Pro hard drive is the company’s second foray into the wireless hard drive market. And with it came several improvements, as well as some stumbling blocks. The original WD My Passport Wireless, released two years ago, featured a recognizable rectangular design, with some additional thickness to accommodate the SD card slot and internal battery. The new-for-2016 Wireless Pro ($229.99 for the 2TB version of WD and $249.99 for the 3TB model we tested) retains the same basic idea. Still, it changes things up a bit with a dramatically different design, new features, and improved hardware inside—Higher-capacity hard drives and larger batteries are notable.

The My Passport Wireless Pro should not be confused with the completely different (and wireless) two-year-old My Passport Pro, which is a RAID model with two drives inside the case. It joins a small group of portable hard drives embracing the concept of a portable, personal cloud designed for our increasingly mobile world. Competitor Seagate is the first player in this connected portable hard drive space, but Seagate’s current Wireless Mobile Plus storage drive tops out at 2TB for $180. Others have participated, and some of these, already out of the hard drive market, include Buffalo, Corsair, LaCie, and Toshiba.

While other drives have made a splash for smartphone and tablet lovers, WD targets the Wireless Pro not only at space-constrained mobile users but also at photographers and videographers who want a place to offload images on the go and in the field. WD says it changed focus when it discovered that about half of first-generation wireless drive users used the included SD card reader to import a “healthy mix” of images and video. It includes features like Adobe Creative Cloud connectivity, 802.11ac wireless, and FTP support for connecting wirelessly to the camera; an updated SD card slot; and the ability to draw power from the battery to charge other USB devices, such as GoPro (known for its short battery life).

These features help WD aggressively appeal to photographers and videographers, a unique tactic and approach that tries to fill the void for professional shooters and videographers alike. But, alas, from the act of trying: If WD wants to provide a useful storage device for photographers, then the Wireless Pro’s features and software will be implemented even better.

As casual photographers, we started shooting to see how it stands up to the competition — and how well it fulfills its mission of wireless streaming. As mentioned, we tested the 3TB version, which sells for $249.99. The 2TB version has an MSRP of $229.99, about $50 more than the Seagate 2TB wireless drive.

Design and Features

Everything about the Wireless Pro’s case is designed to stand out, except for its color. The drive is made of solid, matte black plastic, with shiny inlays on the front to give it a bit of visual refinement.

Unlike a typical rectangular hard drive, the Wireless Pro has a distinctive 5-inch square, like an older Discman CD. In that same vein, it’s 0.9 inches tall — in other words, thicker than the thin portable hard drives commonly found today. It’s large, but not difficult to use.

The notable difference is the weight of the drive. We’ve used most of the competition on wireless hard drives and noticed the Wireless Pro’s weight right away. We’re not surprised to note that it weighs 1 pound, which is heavy compared to Seagate’s Wireless Portable Memory Plus (2TB), weighing 0.6 pounds. Granted, the Wireless Pro adds an SD card slot that most others don’t, but even with that, it feels heavier than you’d expect for the hard drive and battery. Is that extra weight due to the 6,400mAh battery, up from 3,400mAh on the first-generation Wireless drive? That’s not clear, as both the Seagate and the Wireless Proclaim 10 hours of battery life, although we don’t have Seagate’s battery specs.

There are two mechanical buttons on the top edge of the drive, a USB Type-A 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port for direct connection to our laptop or desktop. The button on the left (seen from the front of the drive) does many things: activates the LED battery meter on the front of the drive, activates a WPS connection to your router for easy configuration, and getting started data transfer via SD card. Button on the right to turn the drive on and off.

When we first tested the drive, the power button was our first source of frustration: It behaves inconsistently when powered on and seemed to lose power forever, one of the few glitches we’ve ever encountered. I have encountered the firmware that the drive comes. More than a month after the drive was announced — this behavior to consumers, WD has released a new firmware (version 1.01.11) that addresses many of the issues we’ve had on the first pass of the test.

The new firmware has accelerated the shutdown process to a count of one or two, with LEDs flashing to indicate the drive is doing something before shutting down quickly. (Previously, it wouldn’t indicate that it was spinning down and needed to hold down for 3 seconds, plus another 40 seconds to go down and off. Normally, we would suspect that we pressed it. hold the button long enough.) Power-on became more consistent, although we had to press the button a little harder than expected. But after updating the firmware, the difference is night and day.

In addition to the battery level LED, the front panel has two more LEDs. The top is the Wi-Fi status LED, while the bottom is the drive status LED.

At the top left is the SD card slot, this time supporting the SD 3.0 specification. The SD card reader in the Wireless Pro supports read speeds of up to 75MB per second and write speeds of 65MB per second, according to WD, depending on the card used. Those speeds improve the My Passport Wireless, but they don’t come close to the maximum speeds of Ultra High Speed ​​(UHS) and UHS-1 SD cards.

Also, as we mentioned, the drive now has a USB 2.0 port. It can be a seemingly odd inclusion until you realize its presence – and WD’s design – mean the drive can act as a power backup. That means you can connect a phone or tablet (or short-term action camera) to draw power from the Wireless Pro’s battery, albeit slowly; the gate outputs 5 volts at 1.5 amps.

Why use USB 2.0 for power bank connection? WD explains that the Realtek 1195 chip inside the drive only supports so many ports for fast USB (and two are used for card readers and direct USB 3.0 connections).

Wireless Pro enhances wireless connectivity to 802.11ac, with wireless connectivity at 5GHz over 802.11ac and 2.4GHz over 802.11n. We connected to our Apple iPhone 6S Plus using the 5GHz band. While 802.11ac wireless is an improvement, we couldn’t gauge how much 802.11ac’s presence affected our experience during use. One more notable difference: Wireless Pro can act as a wireless access point for up to eight devices and a wireless drive simultaneously.

Setup and Application

WD markets this drive to “experts,” but that doesn’t mean every user will be tech-savvy enough to figure out how to get the most out of the drive. At least, not without reading the 60-page manual available on WD’s site.

The included quick start guide will get you started with the wireless connection, but then you have a bit of detective work to figure out what to do next, other than downloading the WD My app. Cloud, has now been updated to support Wireless Pro. On a Windows computer, we have to find out where the software is on the drive. We followed the prompts to connect to the Wireless Pro using the login passcode conveniently affixed to the front of the drive on the label. It took several tries, but we finally managed to connect via our iPhone 6S Plus. (There is also an Android version of the app) WD says that this glitch has been fixed in the latest firmware update. However, we successfully connected an iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, and a Computer Nvidia Shield board without even pre-updating on the second model of this drive.

The My Cloud app has had several top-level interface enhancements over previous iterations to improve disk access and the general layout of the app. A My Cloud account is not required to use the app with Wireless Pro, but if you already have a My Cloud product, you can sign in and thus also have access to that drive.

Some things about the app are rough around the edges. For example, when we sign in and get connected for the first time, the app prompts us to automatically Backup our entire iPhone. Great idea, or so we think. When we realized how slow that was – and how long it took to upload 77GB of photos and videos – we wanted to cancel the Backup and quickly found we couldn’t. The app must be deleted and reinstalled to remove that action.

The default application shows all files and folders. Along the bottom is a navigation bar with tabs for photos, music, and videos. However, none of this did a convincing job in organizing and accessing our content. For example (and ironically, for a product geared towards photographers), the app struggled to display the JPEG images we uploaded to the Wireless Pro. These files range in size from 2MB to 8MB.

When we look at the Photos tab, we see the drive shows nothing but icon placeholders, as you can see below. Firmware update, we received JPEG previews for some folders through the All tab (which is how you access the file-folder structure on the drive) and some through the Photos tab, but not for all.

After updating the firmware, the image loading is faster, from 30 to 40 seconds to 20 to 25 seconds. Images viewed through the application still lack the clarity and detail of images viewed directly on a PC or through an alternative application. WD says this is due to the way the My Cloud app handles JPEG files. RAW shooters are out of luck as the app doesn’t support this format.

On iOS, you need the My Cloud app to access the Wireless Pro’s native file folder structure or Access files using Photos, Music, or Videos. We had more difficulty with the subject-specific tabs, but we did everything through the app as is typical for wireless drives in the iOS universe. That means file sharing is based on iOS file sharing protocols, which means you can do some file sharing and moving, but the My Cloud app limits your flexibility.

When we first tested the drive at launch, the Music tab did a similar job displaying music stored on the My Cloud app. We moved the files from our computer to the Wireless Pro drive into a new folder we created called “Music.” The dozens of artist folders we moved that folder are recognized in that tab, nor are there any songs outside those folders. Worse still: The search mechanism in the Music tab doesn’t even find files with artists’ names in them. We could access the music, but only directly from the All tab — allowing you to access the pure file folder structure on the drive. That proved problematic, however, as our songs were sorted as they were downloaded via Amazon Music: It meant we couldn’t load playlists,

After talking to WD, the company tried to improve the experience with the first firmware update and the subsequent app update… albeit with very little improvement. The song folders show up in the Music tab, but there’s still no way to organize the music into playlists, as the tracks are still stuck in individual folders, just like in the folder view. The search bar is still not working.

When we played music, it streamed without a hiccup. Sadly, video streaming is less consistent. We tried many different video files, mostly .MP4 or MOV format, and experienced choppy video playback with frequent pauses in buffering before and after the firmware update. We also tried the second version of the drive. It was also plagued by stop-to-buffer behavior when streaming video wirelessly (even with WD My Cloud’s 30-second 1080p sample videos) on an iPhone 5. Galaxy S7 Edge and Shield Tablet. Streaming playback is difficult whether only one of these mobile devices is trying to stream sample vids or several of them are trying simultaneously.

Then we tried a highly compressed MP4 file, an extract of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (3.2 GB file), and we could stream much more smoothly on the iPhone 5. We then added the Shield Tablet and made it happen concurrently, only occasionally buffering pauses interrupting playback. (In both cases, it took more than a minute to start up the file.) The conclusion we had to draw: Your streaming mileage will vary depending on the specific device you connect the drive to, video file type and resolution/bitrate, and the combination of mobile devices you try to connect. The drive can stream up to eight devices simultaneously at 720p, but in our experience, it struggled with only a few devices.

As for accessing the drive through the PC? You’d be forgiven for forgetting that it can since that process is completely absent from the Quick Setup Guide and is buried on page 16 of the full manual. We intuitively engaged by plugging in the drive via USB and clicking into the drive’s Windows software folder to find the necessary installer files and find a way to access the Web browser-based control panel. There’s no doubt that this directly attached setup could (and should) be clearer. That’s especially since the WD Access PC software has nothing to do with the underlying Web-based control panel for the device… and that software isn’t even mentioned anywhere in the manual.

To handle the basic configuration, open a browser and type http://mypassport or enter the DNS address (http://192.168.60.1) as found in the manual to get started on the PC. (Sometimes we found the former to work, sometimes we needed to use DNS.) We went through some simple setup screens, configuring Internet access, setting up automatic replication behavior save the SD card slot and USB port, check to download and install Plex Media Server (which we still do manually in the end). Then you’re entering the My Passport Wireless Pro console — just like what we’ve seen before on other WD My Cloud-enabled drives.

The dashboard home screen shows the capacity, battery status, and Wi-Fi connection (if used in a direct connection, share Wi-Fi as a hotspot, or if the drive disk and device are connected over the network). Finally, the “standard” connection mode is configured via the Wi-Fi tab on the dashboard…

We’ve cycled through the options to see what’s available to tweak. In Media, we can adjust the media server settings and set the SD card slot and USB port to auto-import; This browser-based interface is the only point to view the transfer progress.

We have a good understanding of the general operation of networked drives, but we missed seeing a more thorough guide to the PC software installation process. Yes, the point of the drive is a wireless drive — but at some point, there will be a PC connection. We scoured the installation process and installed the WD Access software stored on the Wireless Pro drive, as well as the WD Backup.

While Backup is optional, it turns out that Access is indispensable for accessing the drive and transferring files to it. The application integrates into your Windows system tray or is accessible through the Windows Start Menu. The whole process could be more streamlined, making it easy to map My Passport Wireless Pro to a drive letter, create shortcuts, and upload files to the drive. But then again, it’s hard to know where all this is without your minions.

For the Plex Media Server that you were prompted to download and install, the WD setup software was never actually downloaded and prompted us to go through the installation and registration process. We had to manually visit Plex’s website, sign up for the service with an e-mail address, and then download the software. We won’t go into the Plex software in depth here, but we will note that the integration could be more powerful, especially for offline use of Plex as an interface to access the drive’s multimedia content plate. Plex can do a good job of organizing and servicing your Media. Still, Plex’s inherent limitations underscore why the My Cloud app has become so important to the overall usability of Wireless Pro.

where can you get a Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro online

WD 4TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive, Wifi USB 3.0 – WDBSMT0040BBK-NESN: Buy it now

WD 1TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable external Hard Drive – WiFi USB 3.0 – WDBVPL0010BBK-NESN (Certified Refurbished): Buy it now

Performance testing

We ran the My Passport Wireless Pro through our standard direct-attached storage tests and found it a pretty good performer compared to other wireless portable drives. Other contenders we’ve ranked here are:

• The Seagate Wireless Portable Hard Drive (the 500GB version we tested).
• The LaCie Fuel (1TB).
• The Wireless Portable Hard Drive.

Toshiba Canvio AeroCast (1TB) and now-Corsair Voyager Air 2 (1TB) are defunct.

On Anvil’s Storage Utilities 1.1.0, which measures read and write performance as a composite index score, the My Passport Wireless Pro tops its class with a score of 258.6. It’s more than twice as fast as the Seagate (not surprising to us, since the Seagate wireless model targets a valuable price point and the drive is also poor in other tests) and ahead of the Corsair, reaching 248.5.

On Crystal DiskMark, the LaCie passed the Wireless Pro in both its sequential read and sequential write tests, but it is a turning point on this one. LaCie scored 114.2MB per second in sequential reads and 113.1MB per second in sequential writes, compared to the Wireless Pro’s 112.3MB read and 111.6MB write.

PCMark 8’s storage test shows the Wireless Pro popping up momentarily, once again to the LaCie Fuel. LaCie scored 1,977 compared to the Wireless Pro’s 1,893, just ahead of the next two devices.

In the PCMark 7 secondary storage test, the Wireless Pro fell to third, scoring 1,490 points against Seagate’s 1,588 and Corsair’s 1,752.

Battery life

Battery life doesn’t quite live up to WD’s claims, at least in our video streaming tests. My Passport lasted 6 hours and 19 minutes playing our standard test file, an extract of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, streamed wirelessly to an Nvidia Shield Android tablet. That’s enough to get you around the country, if not long enough for a full day of use; nor is it the nearly 10 o’clock WD claims. However, it’s still better than the first-generation WD drive, which lasted 4 hours and 39 minutes. The Corsair Voyager Air 2 comes in second at 7 hours, and the LaCie Fuel is still ahead with almost 17.5 hours. However, that drive is a large hard drive, with room for a strong battery inside.

Conclusion

In addition to the official wired test, It ran some unofficial numbers to try out other aspects of the handover. Our 16 folders of 90 MP3 files (670MB of total data) required 6.5 minutes to wirelessly transfer over 802.11ac, with an average of about 1.7MB per second. And transferring large SD cards proved tedious: It took 40 minutes to transfer half of the 59GB sets of photos from the SD card, and at the hour mark, we only got 46GB. As with our iPhone auto-backup, we had no way to pause or cancel the file transfer.

Most annoying: While you can set the SD card to automatically transfer, you can’t get confirmation of a successful transfer on the drive. The software doesn’t get better: The My Cloud app doesn’t show the backup status, and the browser-based dashboard only shows the progress buried under the Media tab.

If the My Passport Wireless Pro were just another portable Wi-Fi drive, it would be a reasonable proposition given its high capacity, good performance, and Internet tethering capabilities. Sure, the software setup could be smoother, and the apps don’t just need an upgrade, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is the largest capacity wireless hard drive you can buy, and it can be helpful (especially if you can play the video smoothly).

If we consider the drive as a tool for photographers, that’s where it becomes harder to sell. Due to the software glitches and lack of finer control over the transfer — not to mention its lack of field-friendly features like the rugged exterior that’s rated to withstand drops of extreme weather — we can’t recommend this drive to the market without a reservation.

That’s especially true considering how inexpensive flash media have become these days. Yes, you can transfer files without a computer — and for some, that will help. But what good is the file transfer if it takes too long, or you can’t easily see and confirm that everything was transferred successfully? The solution could be much simpler for many people: Buy (and carry) more flashcards.

Advantages

Built-in SD card slot 3.0.

Available in 2TB or 3TB capacities.

Good battery life for a wireless hard drive.

Defect

Experience glitches, even after WD firmware update.

Bulky, non-traditional size.

Deploying software is difficult.