this product brings back some actually
pretty amazing memories for me this
promotional video for the original
Voyager air was actually the first
revenue generating project that we ever
did for Linus Media Group that was a
really uncertain time for us but we've
kind of stuck together through the
amazing journey that the last
year-and-a-half has been and I feel like
both my team and I have grown and
changed so much as content creators in
that time but what about the Voyager air
how has it changed welcome to my video
of the Voyager air 2 wireless media
streaming drive from Corsair the jazz
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out-of-the-box the most obvious changes
the industrial design the Voyager air
the red one in particular had an angular
aggressive looking style to it that I
personally really liked and while the
bottom of this new generation product is
bold and eye catching with a quality
feeling soft touch finish on the blue
part and a nice grippy rubber ring to
keep it in place on the table
unfortunately this design language
didn't carry over to the top where
instead we find an unexceptional matte
and glossy black plastic affair
thankfully the glossy plastic accent
isn't easily scratched but it'll still
always look smudgy no matter what you do
because the buttons for power and
wireless are both built into it which I
guess leads pretty well into a physical
tour of the unit on the front aside from
the aforementioned buttons there are
indicators for remaining battery power
and DC power in then on the back there's
a USB 3 micro connector for charging and
data the courser includes a cable for as
well as a 5 volt 2 amp power input just
for charging but unfortunately Corsair
doesn't include the cable for in fact
the accessory package has been slimmed
down in a few ways you no longer get a
wall adapter a handy cigarette lighter -
2 amp USB adapter or an accessory pouch
just a drive and a USB 3 cable and well
normally I'd complain bitterly about
this Corsair does get a pass here
because they are passing along a
significant price reduction to the
customer so if you really want this
stuff you can just buy it yourself and
you won't be paying any more than the
original Voyager air
all right so enough staring at this
black box what the heck does it actually
do Linus great question inside you'll
find a few things first is a 1 terabyte
hard drive second is a wireless network
card and third is a large 6,200 milliamp
hour battery to power both of those
other things the hardware on its own
actually doesn't inherently do much it's
all about the software with the Voyager
air so start by powering up the drive
and turning on the wireless interface
wait a minute or two and using a
smartphone or tablet there are apps for
iOS android and kindle download the
voyager air a p-- connect to the Wi-Fi
hotspot the the Voyager air 2 generates
on its own launch the app and start
setting up your new toy from the
settings menu we can configure wireless
pass through so device is connected to
the Voyager II r2 can also access the
internet through another nearby network
set up a password for the onboard Wi-Fi
set up a DLNA media streaming server if
you want and set up automatic sync for
Dropbox or Google Drive a feature that
makes the device much easier to load up
prior to a trip or something very handy
active transfers is the next button down
the Voyager air 2 can either stream
media like the old one or here you can
see the queue of files that you've
selected to cache locally on your device
to save power I prefer this approach
since less Wi-Fi streaming will cut down
on battery use for both devices you can
see and manage everything you've cashed
in the download folder or by using any
standard File Explorer program on
Android anyway speaking of managing
files one of the big complaints about
early Wi-Fi drives is that you couldn't
really do that through the included apps
nowadays with the Voyager air 2 you can
so you can view reorganize rename and
delete stuff at will with the only
drawback being it's a little bit awkward
and it's not the only thing that's a
little awkward about the UI the built-in
music player is well integrated on iOS
and you can swipe up to change tracks
and whatnot whenever musics playing but
on Android when you want to get at it
you need to launch the whole app rather
than Corsair throwing it in
notifications or providing a widget and
another quirk that I noticed here is
that it's the only part of the Voyager
air app where you have to press the top
left of the screen to go back because
swiping in from the left doesn't work
which I guess since we're in there now
is the last stop in our little tour so I
showed the folder based navigation
file management none of that stuff was
really new in the Voyager air software
but courser has added some other stuff
some of which is not that important some
of which is pretty great
so using metadata and tags Corsair tries
to organize your files for you in four
categories music actually worked pretty
well with it sorting by artist album etc
and even doing a pretty good job of
displaying thumbnails and whatnot but
photos only really let me sort by a year
videos didn't sort at all with any of my
stuff even though Corsair said TV shows
should split out by season and episodes
so let me know if you guys have a
different result there and documents
ended up just being a bit of a mess of
desktop.ini files subtitle files and
other random junk that didn't fit into
the other categories now they're kind of
getting there but there are a lot of
ways that they can continue to improve
this and I think the big thing this
thing right now is granularity how come
I can only sort my Uncategorized videos
alphabetically why can't I sort by
whatever has been most recently
transferred to the drive and then why
isn't there a search function so I don't
have to rely on tags that sometimes work
or manually scrolling through endless
lists of random files which I guess sort
of leads me to another positive point
it's got support for third-party media
players now so you can use a player or
VLC or whatever else instead of worrying
about running all your videos through
handbrake before transferring them to
the Voyager air this is handy but my
dream device would be even better than
that while addressing the whole metadata
thing I guess I'll need to wait a few
more years for this but I'd really like
to see something that has a Plex server
running on it or something like that
that transcodes media on the fly the
Voyager air 2 has improved over the
original one but not to that degree
which leads us into our conclusion on
the hardware side nothing from my big
wish list has really improved there's
still no dual band wireless a key
feature for media streaming and the
wireless still turns off as soon as you
plug something in via USB
meaning that without a DC plug adapter
you can't power the drive off of an
external source and stream at the same
time on the software side while it's
certainly not perfect it is better
better enough to call it a sequel to the
original one even
know what's lacking the Ethernet port
yeah tough to say especially since
they're not getting rid of the original
Ethernet equipped model and that one
gets all the new software updates as
well so this review puts me in a bit of
a weird position where I have to call
the name Voyager air 2 kind of
misleading when it isn't better than the
first one really in any way but I also
have to give kudos to Corsair for
supporting their 18-month old product
with new software when they could have
just as easily abandoned it and told
their customers no you need the new
Voyager air 2 for that so basically the
same conclusion as last time it's a
concept that I like even though its
utility is limited to pretty specific
use cases
now with 30% more gen I guess speaking
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