IO Data Launches Innovative Autonomous Wireless HDD

Japanese company IO Data has just announced the new WNHD-U500 portable hard drive, on its official website. The novelty with this device is the fact that it is completely autonomous.

Did you even wanted to bring your library of documents, photos, movies and music with you on your trip? The problem was that coupling an external HDD to more portable devices at once was quite the hassle. All the wires, all the access policies, having to keep one laptop on to have it share the external HDD and a separate power source to feed the storage device were quite annoying. What if you’d have an external HDD that had its own battery and an integrated WiFi adapter? You’d just put it in your car and every phone, tablet or laptop could get whatever is needed with no wires. This is exactly what IO Data’s new external HDD has to offer. The WNHD-U500 consists of an external enclosure containing a 2.5” HDD, a 1950 mAh battery and a WiFi adapter.

The device mostly targets users of mobile devices. Interestingly, the built-in battery can also supply power not only to the HDD, but can also be used to charge other mobile devices. The overall dimensions of the drive are 126 by 86 by 22 millimeters with a weight of just 260 grams. In imperial that is 4.96” by 3.38” by 0.86” while being 0.57 pounds heavy.

We still couldn’t find any information on how much the battery would last and we would really welcome the opportunity to review one sample just to see how it will handle two or three devices playing a movie or just music directly of it. The IO Data little wonder will be on sale in mid-June at a price around 275 USD. That’s about 220 EUR for the European buyers.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview