Buffalo MiniStation Air USB 3.0 Wireless 1 TB Portable Hard Drive (HDW-PD1.0U3)

UPDATE: 7/3/2014I received the new unit. So far it has been working without any issues. I let the WiFI run all night and here and there I would stream a movie or video clip. So far it has been working great. 3rd time IS a charm I hope.********Here's my experience so far......This device is a brand new product for Buffalo - so new that I was the very 1st to call Buffalo Tech support about this device.I love the idea of this device - portable hard drive, hot-spot, cell phone charger battery, but I will be on my 3rd one in less than a week. The first device was defective - the hard drive was most likely shot - D.O.A. Could've been the shipping- rough handling maybe?? Amazon was great and the exchange was easy.The second one I got worked. I loaded about 500 Gigs of music and movies on it. I then streamed one movie to an iPad (mini retina) an another movie to an iPhone (5). It was working great, I then started scrubbing the movie timelines to see if there was any lag, well the app or device hung up so I restarted the MiniStation Air. Once re-connected through Wi-Fi with the iOS app I got an error on the iOS app (at the bottom black rectangle/ white letters) of something like "the device is not connected. Check Wi-Fi.The weird thing is that I could wirelessly control the MiniStation except see the files on it. I could power it off from the app or connect it to a Wi-Fi hotspot etc, but not access the files on it. This problem was so jacked up that the Buffalo tech (as helpful as they could be) suggested a return, and being the very first case for this device, I did not want to jack around with trouble shooting.So, let's hope the third time is a charm. I'll update my review after I get that one. I'll give it 1 star for now until I get a MiniStation that actually works (and that's being really nice).What I can say is that Amazon has been great and easy to work with in these exchanges.

I work in customer support for a software development company so I'm pretty technical, but this thing is the hardest to configure. I still cannot get it to work. It took me hours to figure out how to get the files from my laptop to the ministation and once I did, i tried to play them on my ipad and got a "cannot play this format" or something like that.I'd love to return this piece of junk, but the time limit ran out. Now I'm stuck with a box that is worth over $160.00 that is useless.And to top it off, the instructions are ridiculous, and not in a good way. This is the worst purchase I have ever made. And I would call their support line but since I work 8-5 that's almost impossible.DON'T BUY UNLESS YOU KNOW A BUFFALO DEVELOPER.They are probably the only ones that can make this thing work, if that's possible!!

Alright guys, ignore all the negative-1 star review, this product is perfect, and I have great information for you in this review.From the outside, compact form, light weight, great for carrying around.Usb 3.0 transfer from computer, great speed, 120Mb/s.Battery bank, just extra feature for emergency use, nice to have it.Main feature, wifi storage, streaming 1080p movies flawlessly for several devices at the same times, however as informed by Manufacture, internet and streaming speed is slowed down when on hotspot mode, but it's not so much a big deal, i still can streaming 1080p video to 2 devices while connecting to internet.Here is the tricky part, FORGET ABOUT THE MINISTATION AIR APP, it's useless. My solution for you:If you're using ios device, buy Infuse pro from the appstore, it lets you watch all the video types, all the subtitles file, together with the ability to search and download subtitles, and the greatest thing, it downloads the metadata for the movies, tv show you're on and manage your files in such a beautiful, gorgeous way.If, you're on android, use BSplayer, it hase all the same feature of Infuse Pro, but not the ability to manage the metadata, such a pity (for me) but it does the job pretty well.

The functionality of the device is good. However, the battery life is about half of that advertised while streaming videos. Also, the device must be powered off in order to charge- it will not charge while connect to your PC and loading files.

I'm taking a star off because this is a bitch to setup for macs ! Here's why:The fact is, the 1 page pictoral quick start is horriable, mis-informed & non-intuitive ! Buffalo concontrated too much on wireless setup & nothing on file xfer, paticualrly from macs. The HD is default formatted as PC NTFS and I got a big-fat read-only mounted on a mac.cNot until I download the less-intuitive-but-still-muddy instructions this I realize I must re-format as PC FAT 32. With same USB 3, Mac writing is considerbly slower, took me over an hour to xfer 12k songs. Seems that you can just dump whatever file directory structure over, and the app will "eventually" finds everything.MiniStation2 app is quirky. Seems it's not dynamically refreshed when I add more songs/pics/movies.Need to double-home-key to really quit the app, re-connect wifi, and let it refresh .. WTF !! Also, wifi is shutoff during recharging ...To be fair, once everything is setup, it works nicely streaming content to my iDevices2/8/15 Update: Taking another star off when I compare it to newly purchased Seagate Wireless+ Returning the sucker this evening. Please read my Seagate comparison to see why ...Buff-a-loo Got-to-go !