Mobile By Lee Mathews Apr. 25, 2014 3:35 pm
Back in March, Toshiba unveiled a slick little wireless adapter for portable hard drives. Now they’ve got their own all-in-one bundle: the Canvio AeroMobile, which packs a lithium-polymer battery alongside 128GB of speedy SSD storage.
Just to clarify what’s going on in the image up top, that USB cable doesn’t need to travel with the drive. You only need to hook it up when the AeroMobile is in need of a recharge or if you want to speedily move some files over from a desktop or laptop.
As you generally do when you buy things in a neat, ready-to-use package, you’ll pay a bit of a premium for the Canvio AeroMobile. Toshiba is selling the drive for $209 on their website. You can roll your own portable storage like this using Toshiba’s own Canvio adapter and purchasing a USB SSD to plug into its USB port. The adapter sells for just $49, and a 128GB Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go will cost you another $100 or so.
The downside is that you’ll have to cable them together, and cable clutter isn’t something we usually try to add to our mobile gear kits. If minimalism is important to you, then the Canvio AeroMobile might just be worth the extra $60. If you’re a Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy S5 owner, you don’t even need to pack an extra cable to recharge it. Your Samsung adapter and cable should work just fine. You also probably won’t even notice the AeroMobile if you toss it in your bag: it weighs just 4.23 ounces and is under half an inch thick.
If the 128GB of storage seems a bit too skimpy for your needs, you may want to consider the LaCie Fuel. It’s bursting with a full 1TB (albeit rotational) drive and it costs $199. It’s also twice as big and heavy as the AeroMobile, but hey… eight times the capacity for ten bucks less.
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Just to clarify what’s going on in the image up top, that USB cable doesn’t need to travel with the drive. You only need to hook it up when the AeroMobile is in need of a recharge or if you want to speedily move some files over from a desktop or laptop.
As you generally do when you buy things in a neat, ready-to-use package, you’ll pay a bit of a premium for the Canvio AeroMobile. Toshiba is selling the drive for $209 on their website. You can roll your own portable storage like this using Toshiba’s own Canvio adapter and purchasing a USB SSD to plug into its USB port. The adapter sells for just $49, and a 128GB Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go will cost you another $100 or so.
The downside is that you’ll have to cable them together, and cable clutter isn’t something we usually try to add to our mobile gear kits. If minimalism is important to you, then the Canvio AeroMobile might just be worth the extra $60. If you’re a Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy S5 owner, you don’t even need to pack an extra cable to recharge it. Your Samsung adapter and cable should work just fine. You also probably won’t even notice the AeroMobile if you toss it in your bag: it weighs just 4.23 ounces and is under half an inch thick.
If the 128GB of storage seems a bit too skimpy for your needs, you may want to consider the LaCie Fuel. It’s bursting with a full 1TB (albeit rotational) drive and it costs $199. It’s also twice as big and heavy as the AeroMobile, but hey… eight times the capacity for ten bucks less.
More...
