Videomaker (2019-04)

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8 VIDEOMAKER >>> APRIL 2019

by Chris Monlux

Computerless

media offload

WD My Passport

Wireless SSD

WD

http://www.company info.com

STRENGTHS

• Automatically offload SD cards and
  USB connected media


• Thumbnails and preview for
  10-bit video

WEAKNESSES

• Slow Wi-Fi read and write speeds


• Video does not play smoothly
  during preview

SUMMARY

The WD My Passport Wireless SSD is

made for on-the-go who media pro-

ducers want to offload their media

without the use of a computer, but it

comes with a large price tag.

RECOMMENDED USERS

• Documentary Filmmaking and
  Journalism


• Corporate and Event Videography

Y

ou’re on a location and you fill

up your SD card, but you still

have two scenes to shoot. You don’t

have your computer. What do you do?

The WD My Passport Wireless SSD is

designed for these situations. Unfor-

tunately, it isn’t so great for those who

shoot high bitrate video.

For this review, we tested the 2TB

option, though this drive is also avail-

able in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capaci-

ties. With prices ranging from $229 for

250GB and a whopping $800 for the

2TB, this portable SSD has a hefty price

tag. To give some context, the 2TB

SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD costs

$500. That’s a lot of added cost for an

all-in-one battery, computerless media

offload and wireless access to the drive.

The nitty gritty

The drive has one USB 2.0 type-A

port for plugging in external media. It

doesn’t discriminate, connect your HDD

or SSD or even a card reader. An SD card

reader is also built into the device. For

charging and connecting to a computer,

it has a USB 3.1 Micro-B port. We wish it

was a USB type-C connector for the po-

tential for faster charging and increased

media throughput. The drive can be set

up to automatically copy the media. It

can even be set to only copy the files it

doesn’t already have.

WD states that the drive has up to

10-hour battery life and we believe it

— if you don’t use it as an emergency

battery pack for another device. The

drive will go into a power save mode

when not in use, but we would just

turn it off. Though you can use the

drive to charge other devices, this use

case presents an unwelcome tradeoff.

If you drain the drive of its power, it

won’t have the power to function. The

power you get from it has to be more

important than the ability to offload

your media for this setup to work.

Additionally, beware that it doesn’t

charge things very fast. Over 45

minutes, we saw a 10 percent increase

in power when charging an iPhone 8

Plus. Other external batteries could

give the iPhone than five times the

charge in the same time period.

Its wireless function is the My Pass-

port Wireless SSD’s main competitive

difference, but transferring data via

Wi-Fi to or from the drive is painfully

slow. With read and write speeds of

160 megabits per second, we would

only expect to be able to smoothly

playback video with a bitrate or

160mbps or lower.

The Wi-Fi can also be used for

previewing files and verifying that

they transferred to the drive. We

tested with 10-bit video from the

250GB – 2TB: $200-$

REVIEW

383 R01 WD My Passport Wireless SSD.indd 8 2/19/19 2:38 PM

VIDEOMAKER >>> APRIL 2019 9

WD states that the drive has up to

10-hour battery life and we believe it

— if you don’t use it as an emergency

battery pack for another device. The

drive will go into a power save mode

when not in use, but we would just

turn it off. Though you can use the

drive to charge other devices, this use

case presents an unwelcome tradeoff.

If you drain the drive of its power, it

won’t have the power to function. The

power you get from it has to be more

important than the ability to offload

your media for this setup to work.

Additionally, beware that it doesn’t

charge things very fast. Over 45

minutes, we saw a 10 percent increase

in power when charging an iPhone 8

Plus. Other external batteries could

give the iPhone than five times the

charge in the same time period.

Its wireless function is the My Pass-

port Wireless SSD’s main competitive

difference, but transferring data via

Wi-Fi to or from the drive is painfully

slow. With read and write speeds of

160 megabits per second, we would

only expect to be able to smoothly

playback video with a bitrate or

160mbps or lower.

The Wi-Fi can also be used for

previewing files and verifying that

they transferred to the drive. We

tested with 10-bit video from the

Storage Capacity: 250GB to 2TB

Connection Interface:

1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (USB Type-A)

1 x USB 2.0 (USB Micro-B)

Maximum Read Speed: 390 MB/s

Bus Power: USB

AC Input Power: 90 to 260 VAC, 47 to

63 Hz

DC Input Power: 5.1 V+ at 2.4 A

Dimensions (L x W x H):

5.3 x 5.3 x 1.2′′ / 13.5 x 13.5 x 3.0 cm

Weight: .011 lb / 0.4.6 kg

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IP67 waterproof rating and the ability

to see when your media is completely

offloaded without another device. It

also has a removable battery.

Next up is the LaCie DJI CoPilot.

It’s an HDD, so the price per gigabyte

is much lower. The 2TB version goes

for $350. It has USB type-C interface

and a built-in display that will indicate

when media offload is complete.

Last up is the My Passport Wireless

Pro USB 3.0, a HDD version of the

product in this review. For 2TB, the

cost is only $140. That’s crazy when

compared to the price of the SSD ver-

sion. The USB read and write speeds

are not as fast as the SSD, as expected,

but with a price like that, it’s hard to

justify splurging on the SSD. The SSD

is far more durable than a spinning

disk drive, however. That can also help

justify some of the cost.

Final thoughts

The WD My Passport Wireless SSD

offers performance improvements over

the HDD version, though it comes with

a huge price tag. The drive works well

but has some quirks that take some

getting used to. It performed as ex-

pected, but it just isn’t fast enough for

working with large amounts of data or

higher bit-rates The price of the drive

is hard to accept, so if it has the func-

tions you need it to have, you will also

have to justify the price — oof.

Panasonic GH5 and GH5s along with

10-bit ProRes 422 files captured on an

Atomos Shogun paired with the Nikon

Z7 and Z6 and the Canon EOS R. We

were impressed that it could play back

10-bit video, though not smoothly.

Data transfer can be fast,

but...

With the Wi-Fi data rates so low, it’s

better to connect the My Passport

Wireless SSD directly to a computer

to pull off the data. Our first hurdle

with media offload was that the drive

needed to be turned off before con-

necting the USB cable. Once connect-

ed and powered on again, it will show

up as an external drive on our system.

If you don’t do this cycle, the drive will

start to charge rather than function as

connected media.

Because the drive comes formatted

as NTFS, Mac systems will only be able

to read the drive out of the box. To fix

this, you’ll need to install the Paragon

NTFS for Mac driver that WD offers with

this product. If you are on a PC, you

shouldn’t have this issue.

Once connected to the computer,

we used both AJA System Test and

Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test to

verify read and write speeds. The AJA

test showed 473 megabytes per second

write speed and 415 MB/s read speed.

The Blackmagic test reported a lower

413 MB/s write speed, but read speed

TECH SPECS

WD My Passport Wireless SSD

REVIEW

was the same at

415 MB/s. This is

fast enough to use

to edit video with a

lower bit-rate.

Both tests

showed speeds

higher than what

WD specifies. It’s

a nice surprise to

get another 20-

MB/s in read and write speeds com-

pared to what was expected.

What do other users say?

During the review process, we like

to go and read user reviews to make

sure we don’t miss anything. One user

complained that the drive lost charge

overnight. The drive still uses some

power when not active, so we recom-

mend turning it off when not in use, and

charging it up when possible.

Another user was upset because the

drive was larger than they expected.

The drive is the same size as the previ-

ous version, if not bigger because of

the rubber bumper on the outside.

This reviewer must have thought that,

because it was an SSD, it would be

smaller. Don’t fall into the same trap.

The last issue was that transferring

media from the drive over Wi-Fi was

cumbersome, and if there is a lot of

data, then they were unable to move

all of the data at once. If you have lots

of data to transfer, we recommend USB

transfer — it’s much faster. When large

files do need to be moved via Wi-Fi,

the cache size will need to be adjusted.

It goes up to 20GB, so moving files

larger than that isn’t possible.

How does it compare to

similar products?

We’re going to look at one other

portable SSD and two HDDs, all with

computerless media offload. The first

is the Gnarbox 2.0. It has a bigger

price tag of $899 for just 1TB. How-

ever, it does have some features that

the WD does not, like USB type-C, an

Offload from an SD card or external media device

Chris Monlux is Videomaker ’s Multimedia Editor.

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