Corsair has expanded its Voyager line with a reasonably priced, feature-rich external storage solution that seems comparable to the HP Pocket Playlist or Kingston Wi-Drive. The company's new Voyager Air fills four roles: a USB drive, a network attached storage unit, a wireless drive and a wireless hub.
The device comes with a 2.5-inch hard drive in capacities of 500GB or 1TB and it features USB 3.0 and gigabit Ethernet connectivity for conventional storage/NAS scenarios. However, it's also armed with a rechargeable battery and 802.11n Wi-Fi, which makes the drive more practical as a mobile solution.
Along with being accessible Windows, OS X and Linux-based machines, data stored on the Voyager Air can be streamed to iOS and Android devices with a free app. Corsair says the Air can pump HD content to as many as five devices at once, while the battery provides up to seven hours of cordless usage.
In addition to its storage capabilities, the Voyager Air can act as a wireless hub by connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot and enabling wireless passthrough to share Internet access. Pricing for the 500GB model is set at $199, while the 1TB version will go for $229. Units are expected to ship next month in various colors.
Accompanying the Air, Corsair also announced a new Voyager GT Turbo USB 3.0 thumb drive, which has a sleek brushed metal enclosure, a capless design as well as read and write speeds of up to 260MB/s and 235MB/s. Pricing is set at $50 for $32GB, $90 for 64GB and $180 for 128GB. Availability is unknown.
While we're talking about storage, it's worth mentioning Kingston's DataTraveler HyperX Predator USB 3.0 drive, which touts a zinc metal alloy case, 240MB/s reads, 160MB/s writes and capacities of 512GB (shipping now for $1,750) and 1TB (due later this quarter, no word on pricing -- "not cheap" is a safe bet).
