ADATA DashDrive Air AE800 500GB Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Over a standard USB3.0 external hard drive, wireless drives do carry a slightly higher price tag due to the additional features that are packed into them. Availability in the US, EU and the UK is rather low at this moment in time with not many vendors stocking the drive. The drive is slowly coming to market and the number of sources will grow in the coming weeks. For now though, Amazon in all three regions has the drive available with US pricing set at $115.99, EU pricing at around €100 (Amazon.de) and finally the UK site at just under £90. Putting this into a relative cost per GB of storage, the AE800 is considerably cheaper than Patriot’s 320GB Gauntlet and is only a fraction more expensive over Corsair’s Voyager Air at only 30¢/GB.

Overview

In some respects, wireless hard drives and even wireless storage in general is still in its infancy and as a result the performance when out and about is still a bit mediocre in comparison to what one can get from the likes of a NAS over a local wireless connection. That said though, the performance that we do get is pretty respectable and it is better than nothing at all when we come to think about it.

When putting the AE800 through its paces, I connected up four mobile devices to it at the same time and streamed the same 1080p high-definition video to each of them simultaneously (one more device than recommended). The result from this test showed that whilst all four devices were able to stream the same video, there was a few moments where one of the video streams would pause as the buffer ran out and this all comes down to a bandwidth limitation. Dropping the video quality down to 720p will allow for up to five concurrent streams whilst general file browsing and use will see the AE800 supporting up to eight concurrent connections in full flow. Now whilst this would appear to make the drive look bad, especially when streaming 1080p content, we do have to consider that this is not a high performance NAS with a strong controller that can easily push out a large amount of bandwidth. In order to keep the cost, battery life and running temperature down, a more conservative controller is used and to be quite honest this is a reasonable trade-in for the money. If you’re really that desperate to have four, five or even six video streams running at the same time, then simply copying lower bit-rate videos to the drive in the first place will let you achieve your end goal – after all the kids are not going to notice or even care if a film or TV recording is not pixel sharp on a tablet.

On the side of power, with wireless hard drives obviously having an integral battery to power the unit whilst it’s not connected to a host system, it is great to see that manufacturers are using this battery for another use by turning the unit into a power bank as well. Virtually all of the wireless drives that are available on the market offer this feature, the only limitation between each of them being their capacity. The AE800 with its 5200mAh capacity offers a little more than ADATA’s own AE400 with its 5000mAh capacity and is therefore able to charge a typical smartphone to full capacity from flat nearly twice over which in some instances make these products a bit of a life saver. I must stress though that whilst this is a feature of the AE800 and other wireless drives in general, the power bank functionality will obviously reduce the amount of running time of the hard drive considerably, so bear this in mind whilst accessing the drive and charging your phone from the AE800 at the same time.

Now whilst the general specifications between wireless hard drives are somewhat the same, the design between vendors is what really sets the units apart in my eyes. If we was to take a spread of products from the market that all had similar specifications, the design of a particular product would be the deciding factor for both myself and a number of potential buyers and this is where I feel that ADATA come ahead of the competition a little. Since I took a look at the HE720 last year with its H1 stainless steel case and then more recently with the HV620 with its sleek looks, the level of quality that I have felt with ADATA’s drives have been exceptional and the AE800 is probably one of the best yet. The sleek gloss black plastic shell and polished effect band around the perimeter of the drive make the unit look as though it is worth more than what it actually costs. This alone makes this drive that bit more desirable in my eyes; after all, we all like to have something that looks expensive, but for a more conservative price.

Overall I feel that ADATA have got a solid product here and the only improvement that I feel would be beneficial is the possibility of releasing  1TB SKU in the future. On top of that, packing in a slightly larger battery would be of a great benefit, or instead by improving the performance of the wireless bridge to provide a better throughput of internet performance. The next step for any vendor of wireless storage device is to move away from the age-old spinning platter and step a little closer to pure flash storage (not removable like on the AE400). In other words I really want to see flash storage such as an SSD at the heart of a wireless drive; the end result being far greater speeds and considerably longer battery life. With the cost of flash storage well below the £1/GB mark, now is an optimum time for ADATA to make the step and come in first with the next generation of wireless storage drives.

Until that time comes, once again ADATA have come up with yet another top tier drive that packs both the performance and the looks that we all want to see. The pricing does need a little attention to make the cost of storage a little more competitive, but on the whole the overall product that is on offer is right on the money.

Pros:

• Large 520mAh battery
• Easy to use mobile application
• USB3.0 desktop interface
• Well known and established brand
• Supports up to 8 wireless clients simultaneously (depending on content type)

Cons:

• Internet bridge performance could do with some improvement

“ADATA have shown that once again they know exactly what it takes to design and build a product that not only looks the part, but offers good levels of performance. With a greater number of users feeling the need to have a larger amount of storage with them on the move, the AE800 is yet another wireless drive that is stylish and fits all the requirements of today’s even more demanding customers.”

Thanks to ADATA for providing us with this review sample.