Corsair Voyager Air 500GB Wireless Storage Device Review

Over the past few years we have watched Corsair expand its business into uncharted territories. So, it certainly wasn't surprising when the press release hit that Corsair had acquired Simple Audio, a partnership that is sure to bring more outstanding innovations into Corsair's portfolio. Another "uncharted" territory Corsair has chosen to take on is the portable storage arena using the well-known Voyager brand.

We first had a peek at the Voyager Air at CES 2013 and at first glance it was easy to tell that Corsair had put their design team to work, making the Air one of the sleekest and stylish wireless storage devices we have ever seen. There are certainly many wireless storage options available in the market, but Corsair has went the extra mile to set themselves apart from the pack by equipping their Voyager Air with USB 3.0, Gigabit LAN and 802.11n.

The Voyager Air was delivered to us in rather attractive packaging. Front and center the packaging features a glamour shot of the Voyager Air, with features of the device listed across the bottom.

Opening up our box we found the packaging inviting with everything tucked away into its own compartment.

Quite simply put, this is the most complete accessory kit we have seen to come standard with a storage device. Corsair has included both home and car adapters to charge the Air, along with the USB 3.0 cable, quick start guide and cloth bag.

Our sample was of the red and black coloring. Corsair also offers a black on black color scheme.

On one end of the Voyager Air we found the power and wireless switches tucked away. Above the switches there are three LEDs that light up when the drive is in use. Each of these LEDs function as indicators for the state of the drive, these include power, battery life and wireless activity.

On the flip side of the Air we found the Gigabit Ethernet port located next the USB 3.0 and charging port.

Of course I had a go at popping the Air apart and found a very hefty 6200mAh Li-Po battery at the heart of the enclosure, double the capacity of the recently reviewed PQI Air Bank.

Toshiba drives are very popular among these types of enclosures. As a matter of fact, both the PQI Air Bank and Voyager Air share this drive in common.

The brain of the Voyager Air is controlled by a PLX NAS7825. This SoC utilizes dual ARM 11 MP cores operating at 725MHz each and includes two integrated SATA ports and dual PCIe ports.

Taking on the USB 3.0 responsibility we find Corsair chose the amazing ASMedia 1053.

The application from which you access the Voyager Air was simple and easy to install, as are most apps. When launched, we get a welcome screen with the logo.

The app landing screen is well put together with the navigation menu to the left.

The settings menu is one of the nicest I have seen as of late. Looking through the menu we find we can change everything from the drives name, wireless channel and password. Corsair has taken this one step further too, adding a battery life indicator, along with showing how many users are connected to the device.

Upon launching one of our videos, we found Corsair added a sub menu system that allows you to choose what app you want to play the chosen video and even the ability to download it to the device you're streaming to. Another option not shown here is the ability to resume a video if you have to stop it for whatever reason.

I also discovered while digging around in the app the ability to upload media straight from your attached smartphone or tablet to the Air.

Putting the Voyager Air to the test we ran ATTO Disk Benchmark. As you can see above we came away with the Air providing 120MB/s read and 199MB/s write, dead on to what marketing said was capable.

Remarkably, Corsair has succeeded once again in going outside the proverbial box and creating a storage solution that is easy to use and quite attractive as well. While the Voyager Air is made entirely out of plastic, they do feel like they could take some punishment without breaking. The switches located on the side of the device are well placed, and the accompanying LEDs maintain the perfect brightness without overdoing it.

As for performance, the Voyager Air had no issues streaming video to our HP Touchpad, even when the device was left on the test bench and I was in my garage. I found this to be rather impressive for a device so small and on limited power. Connecting the Air to our USB 3.0 ports on the Z77 test system, we found the internal drive to more than capable of transferring files quickly, reaching 120/119 MB/s in our ATTO testing.

Pricing of the Voyager Air is rather competitive. At the time of writing we were able to find the 500GB and 1TB drives with high availability for $179.99 and $219.99, respectively. Each of the Voyager Air models come with a three year warranty.