TechRadar Verdict
The Travelair N suffers from a slightly bulky design but it's easy to use with the associated software – some minor niggles aside, it offers a lot of capability for the price.
Pros
- +
Easy to use
- +
Good wireless connectivity
- +
Long battery life
Cons
- -
Flimsy slot covers
- -
Bulky design
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In the modern world with its myriad of devices, we inevitably end up with lots of files from cameras, phones and more. Often these will be quite precious, either for business or personal reasons, but when you're out and about you have no way of backing them up. We also want to consume media wherever we go and smartphones and tablets may lack the necessary storage.
The Asus Travelair N is aimed at people on the move who need a way of securing their information, or want to take their music and movies with them, but are unable to return to the comfort of a computer or network.
Design
It looks like any other portable hard drive, albeit rather chunkier than most 2.5-inch units, but the Travelair N is battery powered so you can use it anywhere to backup data from other portable devices.
The top has a shiny finish with a subtle swirly pattern and a chrome Asus logo. It looks smart though it does tend to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet. The edges are shiny and underneath is grained black plastic with a rather crude looking moulding mark in the centre. There's a power button on the right-hand side with LED indicators above it, an SD card slot on the left and a USB port on the bottom edge, both covered by flaps to keep out dust and dirt. It's supplied with a USB cable, mains charge adaptor and a brief instruction leaflet.
The Travelair offers a generous 1TB of storage plus an SD card slot to expand this space or to backup data from your camera. The clever part though is that it's a self-contained Wi-Fi network so you can transfer files to and from it wherever you are.
It's possible to connect up to five different devices at the same time. The Travelair also has NFC for one-touch transfers with devices that support it. You can download an Asus AiDrive app which lets you easily browse, stream, share and manage files on your Travelair N with your iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, or Android device.
It can be connected wirelessly to your home network to use it as a NAS drive to stream media to other devices including tablets and smart TVs. If you'd rather do things the old fashioned way it has a USB 3.0 port for fast wired transfers directly to and from a device.
