The battery-powered NAS that fits in your pocket

 

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Posted on 23 Mar 2010 at 16:30

The AirStash is a portable network media server that’s small enough to fit in your pocket, has a built-in battery, is small enough to fit in your pocket and connects to your laptop or smartphone using WiFi. Perhaps even more amazing, it will cost just US$100 (approx. £66).

The AirStash looks like it’s roughly the size of a mobile phone and has a built-in lithium polymer battery that’s recharged using USB. The manufacturer, Wearable, claims the battery will last for around five hours. Unsurprisingly given its size, the AirStash doesn’t use a hard disk for storage but relies on SD cards instead.

It has a SDHC slot, so it can accept up to 32GB of storage - you’d have to supply your own card though as none is included in the box. 802.11g wireless networking is built-in so files stored on it can be accessed from any computer or smartphone with WiFi. USB Mass Storage mode is also supported, so files can also be accessed when it’s plugged into a USB port on your computer.

The AirStash is an intriguing product and is unlike any storage device we’ve seen before. Although it can be used with any WiFi-equipped computer, Wearable is marketing the AirStash as a way for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad owners to add more storage to their gadgets which lack memory card slots. Movies, music and photos stored on the AirStash can be streamed to Apple’s iPhone OS devices using a web interface.

As clever as the AirStash is though, outside of this Apple-shaped niche we’re not sure who else would want to use it. The use of SD cards and 802.11g wireless networking means it’s clearly not designed as a heavy duty file server for transferring huge quantities of data, while most other portable gadgets have SD card slots and/or the ability to create ad-hoc wireless networks for sharing files.

Nevertheless we’re still intrigued by the AirStash. Unfortunately, it is currently only available for purchase within the United States, although one could purchase it using the Bundle Box service which allows non-American customers to buy US-only goods.

Author: Alan Lu