G-Technology G-Connect Hard Drive Review

I am sure by now many of you have a portable electronic device, as the airlines like to call them. You know, the iPad, Android tablet or a smartphone.  The only problem with these devices, is that there is very limited storage.  As in the case of the iPad’s 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage, this can fill up very quickly. If you are like me, you hate taking the time to upload a movie onto your iPad. It’s not that it’s hard, just do not want to spend the time finding the movie I want to upload from the library on my computer. So on many occasions while on a flight, for instances, I end up playing a game.  Not anymore, now that G-Technology‘s  G-Connect is available.

G-Technology’s Wireless Hard Drive

The G-Connect is a wireless hard drive that can connect to any device. Not to just one device, many devices, at one time. This magical hard drive is amazing.  With a few simple steps you can have access to 500GB of movies, music, photos, ebooks and documents.

As you know, the folks at G-Technology sponsored the GeekBeat crew’s trip to the CEA Line show and the entire trip JohnP, Norm, Mark and I watched movies and streamed music from the G-Connect. The drive was punished. It was beat around inside the Cadillac, inside backpacks, dropped from tables and the list goes on. It never skipped a beat.  We had two iPads, 2 iPhones, a MacBook Pro and an Android phone all connected watching different movies at one time.  If you have kids and numerous devices, the G-Connect is your answer to long family trips. My kids like to watch the same movies, but argue who is going to hold the laptop or iPad. On a recent trip, the G-Connect sent the same movie to two iPads. Talk about happy kids, and a happy dad.

Not only will the G-Connect stream all your media and photos, it also will act as a wireless router. Why would you need that, you ask? Well imagine you are in a hotel room on family vacation.  No pool, it’s raining, or you wanted to go have a romantic evening without the kids.  Attach the LAN cable from the hotel to the G-Connect and now all the kids can surf the web and watch movies.

Here are some more specifications:

USB 2.0 cable to connect to computer for fast uploading
 
Gigabit Ethernet
 
802.11b/g/n with WPA+2
 
iPhone/iPad apps to make connection easy
 
Supports the following Video file formats – mp4, m4v, mov
 
Supports music formats – mp3, m4a
 
Supports graphic formats – jpg, tiff
 
Apple Time Machine support
 
Windows XP or higher and Mac OS 10.5.8 or higher

Verdict

I really like this device, the kids like the G-Connect, and it works. It is very durable. I wouldn’t purposely throw it around, but a few drops or lugging around a backpack is ok. I now take this with me everywhere.  With that said there are a few things that I would like to see in a future update. First of all, an internal battery. The G-Connect has to have a power source. You can connect to a laptop with the supplied USB cable, to an outlet or external battery charger but a internal power source would make this even better.  A larger hard drive choice would be nice. With external terabyte drive prices dropping, hopefully future models will have this as an option. An SD card slot would be great to easily upload pictures straight to the drive. It also would be nice if you select the iPhone/iPad app, it would automatically switch to the G-Connect wifi.

This is not the “perfect” device, but what device is? We will always want more from our electronics. But the G-Connect is close. If you do not want to eat up your valuable limited storage on your portable device, the G-Connect is for you. I totally recommend it. Visit G-Technology website for more detailed information.