CES 2018: Western Digital Announces New Storage Device

Western Digital recently announced a new storage device: the My Passport Wireless SSD. With capacities and prices ranging from 250 GB ($229.99) to 2 TB ($799.99), the Wireless storage device is a provocative buy you might want to add to your kit, especially if your shooting requires you to be out in the field.

Notable product specs include:

Built-in SD card reader
Durable and shock resistant, up to 1 meter
Up to 10 hours of battery life
Photo viewing and wireless 4K video streaming
Import from USB card readers
Ability to charge mobile devices (such as an iPhone)
RAW file preview support
Need of third-party apps to edit content
Weight: 1 lb

The best part about the new Wireless SSD? You won’t be needing your laptop to backup your photos and/or videos. Weighing in at only 1 lb, you probably won’t even feel the storage device in your camera bag. If you’re a landscape photographer like me, this could be extremely useful. Especially while spending a few days in the backcountry hiking and taking pictures, I sometimes find myself becoming more cautious about protecting my images. I’ve had my camera ruined on a mountaintop before, causing me to lose my images from the day. It certainly would’ve been nice to backup the photos in order to preserve those precious moments, and potentially have a product to sell to my audience.

If you decide this is something you might buy, it’d be wise to compare the My Passport Wireless SSD to similar products, such as the Gnarbox. The backup device was released a few months before the Passport Wireless, but has a few differences. For starters, the Gnarbox’s batter life ranges only from 4-6 hours. However, the Gnarbox is also shock resistant, and you won’t need third-party apps to edit imported content. With two sizes: 128GB + 64GB microSD ($299.00) and the 256GB + 64 GB microSD ($399.00), the Gnarbox is a bit pricier than the My Passport Wireless SSD, but also provides smaller storage sizes.