LaCie Rikiki TV 500GB review

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Verdict:

A clever idea for Smart TV owners, but for PC users similarly priced USB3 models are faster

Review Date: 28 Aug 2012

Price when reviewed: £53

Supplier: http://www.dabs.com

Reviewed By: Tom Morgan

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Modern TVs are getting smarter all the time, with extra features that require and external hard disk before you can get the most from them. Pausing and recording live TV is the main example – without a flash drive or external hard disk, you won’t be able to use these features at all. LaCie’s Rikiki TV has been designed specifically for this feature, as it comes with a mounting bracket that lets it hang off the wall-mount points on the back of the set.

Understandably, performance wasn’t particularly impressive in our storage tests as the Rikiki TV only supports the slower USB standard. For large files, 30.3MB/s writes and 32.2MB/s reads in our tests are fairly standard for USB, as were 13.5MB/s small file writes and 18.3MB/s reads.

However, as its main purpose is to sit behind a TV, this is less of a concern – none of the TVs we’ve reviewed use USB3, so you won’t benefit from connecting a USB3 disk. This does mean you don’t get any backup software included with the disk, so if you wanted to use it with a PC you would need to find your own backup utility online.

The fancy bracket may win the Rikiki TV some fans, but if you've wall-mounted your TV, you won't be able to use it. It's low price still make it attractive, but if you want a disk for use with more than just your TV, the Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB is the better choice.

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User comments

Great for my LG TV!

Lacie is the only one to provide a solution that has been tested on several TV models, I could not find any other: http://www.lacie.com/tvlist. I fixed it with the bracket behind my LG 42LM620 and it is working great like a old tape recorder but digital / I can now record, pause live TV, schedule a record, it's really worth it! :-)

By rexounet on 21 Sep 2012