HDD by stefan @ 2014-10-30
The portable Voyager Air 2 portable drive from Corsair is sporting wireless capabilities and also includes DLNA and Internet pass-through support. Inside it we have one 1TB 5400RPM from Toshiba and the whole system is powered by a large battery which can bring the usage time up to seven hours.
At first I would like to thank Corsair for sending a sample of their Voyager Air 2 Mobile Wireless Storage for testing and reviewing.
Meeting Performance Computing Demands since 1994
"Corsair is a global company bringing innovative, high-performance components to the PC gaming market. Specializing in very high performance memory, ultra-efficient power supplies, and other key system components, our products are the choice of overclockers, enthusiasts, and gamers everywhere.
Founded as Corsair Microsystems in 1994, Corsair originally developed Level 2 cache modules for OEMs. After Intel incorporated the L2 cache in the processor with the release of its Pentium Pro processor family, Corsair changed its focus to DRAM modules, primarily in the server market. In 2002, Corsair began shipping DRAM modules that were specifically designed to appeal to computer overclocking enthusiasts. From its roots in high-performance memory, Corsair has expanded its award-winning product portfolio to include ultra-efficient power supplies, builder-friendly cases, ground-breaking CPU coolers, blazing-fast solid-state drives, and other key system components.
Corsair has developed a global operations infrastructure with extensive marketing and distribution channel relationships. Corsair’s products are sold to end users in over sixty countries worldwide, primarily through leading distributors and retailers."
The high-performance wireless media hub for your connected life
Voyager Air 2 is the wireless drive that’s optimized for mobility. It lets you enjoy all your videos, music, and photos wherever you go, freed from the storage limitations of your tablet and smartphone. It’s a great choice if you want the powerful storage and streaming features of the Voyager Air but you don’t need a wired connection to your home network.
Break the Mobile Storage Barrier
Smart phones and tablets are great for enjoying media anywhere, but even the most advanced phones and tablets have only 64GB of storage. Voyager Air 2 comes with up to one terabyte of storage, enough to hold up to 800 full-length HD movies or 380,000 MP3 files. You’ll never run out of entertainment again.
Take It Anywhere
Voyager Air 2 is ready to go at a moment’s notice. Batteries and wireless networking are built-in, so you can enjoy all your movies, TV shows, music and photos at the office, or on your next road trip, business trip, or vacation. Since it’s a self-contained streaming media server, you don’t even need an Internet connection.
Voyager Air 2 charges over USB using the included cable. Or add an AC or car kit (available separately) for faster charging.
How it works
As a Portable Wireless Drive
Voyager Air 2 has built-in wireless capability and an extended-life internal rechargeable battery for true portability. You can connect to it with your tablet or smartphone and use the free Voyager Air app to access your library of videos, music, and photos. If you use mobile productivity apps, you can also download and edit documents. The Voyager Air app works with iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and most Android phones and tablets. And you can connect to it from your PC or notebook using any web browser.
Voyager Air 2 supports multiple connections, and can stream 720p high-definition video to up to five devices at once. The battery allows for up to seven hours of video streaming between recharges.
As a Mobile Wireless Hub
You can connect Voyager Air 2 to a wireless home network or public wireless hotspot, enable wireless passthru, and share Internet access with your mobile devices.
As a USB Drive
Voyager Air offers a super-fast USB 3.0 connection that allows you to copy a two-hour HD movie in under 30 seconds. It’s compatible with USB 2.0 connections, as well.
Want more quality time at home?
Want a mobile wireless drive that you can also attach to your home network? Take a look at the original Voyager Air.
All-New Mobile App
The Voyager Air mobile app is a free download from the iTunes App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon Kindle store. It’s been completely redesigned to be more powerful and intuitive. Some of the new features:
Cloud Synchronization
You can synchronize your Voyager Air or Voyager Air 2 to your Dropbox and Google Drive accounts. This means that you don’t even need to think about loading it with your latest content… it will automatically be there.
Stream, upload, and download
Streaming video and music directly from your Voyager Air or Voyager Air 2 lets you enjoy a lot more content than you could normally load onto your mobile device. But, if you’d prefer to keep content on your device, you can do that too. The app makes it easy to download content to your device and upload videos and photos to your Voyager Air. Go ahead and take as many photos and videos as you want, without worrying about running out of room.
Smart media library management
The new app gives you the organization tools you need for any type of media. You can manage TV shows by season and episode, music by artist, album, and genre, and photos by date.
Expanded video format support
You can now use the Voyager Air app to select and play your MKV and AVI videos. The new app is integrated with third-party video players like VLC and nPlayer to let you go beyond the default video formats.
Airplay and DLNA Support
You can stream to your Apple TV with Airplay and access your media from smart TVs, DVRs, and other devices which support DLNA.
In this article we will concentrate upon another interesting product from Corsair, the Voyager Air 2, which was built to aid with extra storage mobile devices like smartphones or tablets which usually do not have a lot of available space available internally. The product packs an internal battery and a wireless interface, which makes data streaming possible, without a lot of difficult configurations. The product is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box, which shows the main functionality right on top, along with a photo of the product but also the total storage capacity:
On the back side we will get to see a small product description:
The list of specifications, in multiple languages, is available on the lateral:
After we lift the top cover, we will find the Voyager Air 2 placed right in the middle, surrounded by cardboard material:
On the bottom layer, Corsair has placed the rest of the bundle:
We will get to find here the product manual along with the USB 3.0 charge/data transfer cable:
In order to get things started, we’d better check out the contents of the guide; one useful feature which the manual does not mention is Internet pass-through:
The storage device has a black plastic chassis, with a Corsair logo in the middle:
The front interface is equipped with the Power On/Off button, the Power LED, the low power indicator, the battery charge indicator, the Wi-Fi On/Off button but also the Wi-Fi LED:
After checking the Voyager Air 2 on the side, we can observe that the product is quite thick:
In the back, we have the DC-IN power connector along with the USB 3.0 power connector:
Surprisingly, on the bottom side of the product the manufacturer has used a cyan blue color for a bit more eye-candy; here a rectangle of rubber was also placed so the product will stay steady on the surface we will place it on:
After we turn on the device, we can go ahead and transfer multimedia content to it via the USB 3.0 cable. If we turn the Wi-Fi interface on too, a new hotspot will be created by the Voyager Air 2:
The box runs a mini-server GUI accessible from the browser, which will index the contents from the drive and display them accordingly; a small battery indicator is also available on the top left side, while on the right there is a possibility to change the interface language:
We can also access the Settings section, for customizing more options like Drive Name, Internet Pass-through, Wireless and more. The same screen gives us the possibility to upgrade the current product firmware:
Initially, if we connect to the hotspot of the Voyager Air, we have no Internet connection available in the same time; however, if we enable the Wireless Pass-through option, Internet access will be available too. We only need to enter up the credentials of the Internet-enabled SSID we want to connect to:
The currently active transfers will be shown in a new tab and we will also be able to spot a Now Playing section:
We have filled the drive with some unsorted video files, photos and music files; these were correctly indexed and displayed in their respective categories:
When playing music files, they will show inside an interface similar to the Now Playing tab:
Inside the Photos tab, we will see that our content has been organized in albums and thumbnails will be shown too:
We can display the photos right from the web interface:
The document files will be also shown in the respective tab:
The Folders tab will show the drive contents as in a file manager; here will be able to use regular commands like the creation of new directories, upload files and so on:
The Recent tab will show the files we have accessed last:
If a drive firmware update is necessary, we will get to see a small red Update button in the same Settings area:
In order to use the advantages Voyager Air 2 offers us on mobile devices, we will have to download the respective application:
Afterwards, we can connect to the dedicated Wi-Fi hotspot and if the Internet Pass-Through option is enabled, web access will be also available:
The GUI is similar to what we have found inside the browser; the application has one left menu with the respective sub-sections; during the indexing period, we will be shown small progress circles in the area of each category:
All detected video files will be shown inside the respective category:
We can playback the content right away:
The Music tab comes with preset categories:
We can playback our favorite tracks and the album cover will be also shown:
The indexed photos will be sorted by date:
The document files are also sorted in the respective section:
The folders can be also viewed as in a file manager:
A Downloads folder is also available:
Next, we will be able to check out the recently accessed files section:
The same options we have seen inside the browser GUI are also available here, inside the Settings sub-section:
The Active transfers screen is pretty self-explanatory:
The testbench was composed from the following hardware:
CPU: Intel I7 Retail @ stock
Motherboard: Foxconn BloodRage with G42 BIOS
RAM: 3x2GB Patriot PVT36G1600LLK 1600MHz
Video: Sparkle GTX 470 with stock and OMNI A.L.C.
Power Supply: Nexus RX-8500 850W modular
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11
Case: Thermaltake Armor+ LCS, stock cooling
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Expansion: ASUS U3S6
When powering on the Voyager Air 2 for the first time, we will see that the drive comes formatted NTFS, with a single partition:
With the help of AIDA64, we will be able to extract some more information about the drive, which is a Toshiba MQ01ABD100, with the rotational speed of 5400RPM:
Two extra folders are present on the drive, ".minidlna" and ".vapoc":
Considering the included battery which allows the drive to operate in a standalone manner, we can really say that the Voyager Air 2 is perfect for people who are frequently on the go and facilitates access to their documents or multimedia content. To the newly created hotspot we can connect multiple devices and if we have the credentials of a nearby WiFi network, we can enable Internet pass-through option for not losing the connection; Voyager Air 2 also has DLNA support for connecting even more devices.
Depending on the type of usage, the battery will last differently and we should get up to seven hours ideally. To aid battery monitoring, we have an indicator right on the device, but also inside the web GUI or smartphone/tablet application.
The wireless transfer speeds are a bit lower than wired transfer and for testing we have used our DELL 7520 laptop and Total Commander.
For accessing the internal contents and performing operations, we can either use the browser GUI or the dedicated Android, IOS applications; the applications are built well and did not crash during our tests.
The Voyager Air 2 1TB drive is available for about 176 Euros; we can say that this is not the cheapest solution around for storing data, but the Wi-Fi and software capabilities should make up for the rest.
We would like to thank again to Corsair for making this review possible!