Seagate Central Hands-On: Easy And Functional


Seagate’s latest “don’t call it a NAS” home storage device has landed. Dubbed the Central, it comes in 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB flavours and it allows you to stream content across eight devices, much like the Wireless Plus drives. What it sacrifices in portability it makes up for in extra features – It provides seamless backup services over the home network that can be accessible over the internet, like your own personal private cloud storage.

While technically it’s a NAS drive, Seagate wants you to think of its Central device as anything but. Central is designed from the ground up to be easy and intuitive to setup and use, nothing like the usual dreaded NAS setup.

To keep the mobile app experience simple, Central utilizes the same Seagate media app as the Wireless Plus. Any content you upload to the drive is automatically organised into relevant categories in an attempt to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. This actually sounds pretty useful if you’ve ever experienced the maze of data when you’re in the terabytes.

This is also the first storage device with a Smart TV app according to Seagate, going along with what seems to be a prevailing theme of CES 2013 — moar apps for moar devices. The app provides a clean interface for viewing content on your television, replacing any media players you might currently be using. Unfortunately, when the app launches it will only be available for Samsung televisions and Blu-ray players.

As for the appearance of the device, I actually find it to be quite suitable for the living room. There are no obnoxious flashing lights all over it, and it was quiet enough and small enough to leave only a very small footprint in living room.

Central is priced from $US189.99 to $US259.99, which is fairly reasonable considering its larger capabilities over a standard hard drive. That said, we’ll have to see what the Australia tax adds on to really judge its value. Release is currently set for March in the US, with Australia to follow.[Seagate]

Adam Hallett is reporting from CES Las Vegas as the winner of Gizmodo’s Seagate Techspert competition.


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