Pogo Plug Review

[rating:4.5]

When I first heard of Pogo Plug, I thought it was an awesome concept with lots of potential. When the second gen came out, it was the solution to lots of my problems. It’s a device that will give me unlimited storage on my phone, and let me access all my data anywhere for only $99. I’ll be taking the Pogo Plug second gen for a spin to see if it’s really all that.

What is the Pogo Plug

The idea of Pogo Plug is to make all your storage accessible anywhere in the world. All you have to do is plug your hard drives into the USB ports on the Pogo Plug, and they can be accessed from my.pogoplug.com. You can even access the drives on iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and other mobile devices. All the data is shareable with family and friends making the Pogo Plug your own virtual DropBox.

Design

The Pogo Plug has an AMAZING design. There are no two ways about it. For a $99 product, it’s amazing that the Pogo Plug can have such a great design at this low cost. The main Pogo Plug unit is white with a hot pink plastic structure which elevates the main unit. Not only does this look good, but it makes the Pogo Plug unique. On the front of the unit, there is one USB port (Which can be used with the Pogo Plug wifi unit). Under the USB port, there is a status light which lights up whenever the Pogo Plug is connected to the internet or is working. It can also be used to plug in hard drives and USB sticks in the front. There are another 3 USB ports on the back which can also be used to plug in storage to the device. All the cords that plug into the Pogo Plug thread out through the plastic structure organizing the Pogo Plug.

Accessibility

The great thing about the Pogo Plug is that you can access your data anywhere with an internet connection. To sign in on any of the Pogo Plug apps, all you need is your email address and password. The interface on my.pogoplug.com is very good and is easy to learn. All your media is viewable from the website including pictures, videos, documents and music. I use the Pogo Plug Android app and surprisingly, I could stream a movie to me phone on 3G. It also has a music player, but it’s hard to use and stops the song whenever you re-open the app. The apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android are all free and easy to setup. Unfortunately, you have to transcode all your movies if they are to be viewable on your devices.

I/O and Connectivity

If your going to be storing all your HD media using the Pogo Plug, it’s important to get good speeds. When I first accessed the Pogo Plug from on my laptop, I was getting terrible speeds; 1mb per second or lower. As soon as I hooked up to Ethernet, I got 10mb+. This is fine for video and photos, but not ideal for video editing or hardcore photoshopping.

The I/O is really good for a $100 piece of kit. You get 3 USB ports on the back, and one on the front. If you had 4 Seagate 3TB hard drives, you use up to 12TB with the Pogo Plug. You can connect an unlimited number of Pogo Plug devices on your Pogo Plug account giving you unlimited space on the Pogo Plug. There are currently no options for getting any USB 3 or Firewire on Pogo Plug which I would like to see in the future Pogo Plug devices. The Pogo Plug uses Ethernet to connect to the internet but you can get a wireless n adaptor for $29.99. If you get the wireless adaptor, you have to sacrifice the USB port on the front.

File Sharing

One of the highlights of the Pogo Plug is that you can share whatever you want to certain people. Lets say I needed to share a 20gb video with an OmniTechNews colleague. Services like DropBox and Windows Live Mesh don’t have enough storage for such big files. Pogo Plug makes your storage limit unlimited (12TB) so you can share as much as you want. It’s very easy to share files and can be done on your phone or from the web. The problem with using the Pogo Plug to share large files, is that the speeds can sometimes be slow, which again, is not ideal for video but just perfect for documents and pictures.

Value for Money

The Pogo Plug costs $99 and is highly recommended. It is a great solution if your looking to transfer your media to the cloud. The speeds are good (when you connected to Ethernet) and if also a great alternative to DropBox. There are many apps for all your devices including Blackberry and Android. The only problem I have found with the Pogo Plug is that every video you want to watch on Pogo Plug has to be transcoded which takes 6-12 hours per HD movie. Whether you need it for accessing your files anywhere, or sharing your life with friends and family, Pogo Plug has a use for you. The Pogo Plug is available on Amazon for $99: http://amzn.to/omnipogoplug

Overall, I give the Pogo Plug a 9/10. It’s a cheap and easy-to-setup solution for accessing your hard drives anywhere.