Final Thoughts

In all, ASUS has put together a great first time package for the cheap NAS and AP market. The design is solid, as are the upgrade options for the hard disk. At the present, 80GB notebook drives are available as the largest capacity, with 100, 120 and 160GB drives on the way, making the option for NAS all that more promising - however are two major flies in the ointment.

The first is transfer rates. With only a 54mbps Wireless link, large files across the air is slow and sometimes painful, however, for streaming media the unit is a perfect for video, photos and various other multimedia content. The next logical step is to go 108mbps Turbo or Super-G to boost overall transfer rates.

The second fly is SATA. SATA has now taken hold on the desktop platform with numerous ports, faster data transfer rates, lower voltages and smaller connectors, and the laptop sector ahs also shown signs of swapping to SATA drives in notebooks. This means that larger notebook drives will most likely come out in SATA only, leaving this baby in the lurch. That said, we don't have to worry for a few years of IDE notebook drives disappearing from the shelves, but finding the larger density ones in IDE when SATA is poised to take the notebook market on seems like a dark cloud to us.

Overall the ASUS WL-HDD 2.5 inch unit was sleek, attractive and very functional with no problems or quirks in our extensive tests. It is an ideal solution for users wanting a flexible network hard drive which also add Wireless Networking to your network without breaking the bank.

- Pros

Innovative, adds Wireless Networking to your wired network

Very affordable at around $80 USD (around $110 AUD)

Easy to use and setup (no drivers required)

Perfect for streaming media files

Upgrade options for HDD

USB 1.1 port for easily copying flash drive data

- Cons

Only 54mbps Wireless, 108mbps would have been better to increase Wireless data transfer rates

Only USB 1.1 for flash disks

Rating - 8.5 out of 10 and TweakTown's "MUST HAVE" Best Features Award!