Pogoplug USB drive internet sharing device January 2010

The Pogoplug is a multimedia sharing device that lets you access almost unlimited amounts of your media files from anywhere with an internet connection. Which? hasn't fully lab-tested the Pogoplug, but here are our first impressions. 

There are already options available for sharing large amounts of personal data from your home via the web. Network-attached storage (NAS) devices are essentially hard drives that can connect directly to your home broadband network, but a NAS can be expensive and also complex to set up. The Pogoplug is a simple alternative to a NAS, without any built-in storage of its own – instead you connect any USB device that you want to share online.

We're looking at the second generation of Pogoplug. The first Pogoplug was a simpler plug-style device with only one USB socket. The updated Pogoplug increases this to four USB sockets, and changes the styling to a upright desktop design in white, clear and pink plastic. Three of the USB ports are on the rear, and one on the front, ideal for temporarily hooking up a USB stick to share photos on the web, for example.

Pogoplug setup

We found setup was as simple as you could possibly expect from a network-connected sharing device. You'll need to connect the supplied ethernet cable between the Pogoplug and your broadband router. Having a wired connection means speed of your connection should be more reliable than if you were connecting via Wi-Fi, but it also means that the Pogoplug will normally have to be located close to your router. The second step is to plug in the Pogoplug's power supply, and finally the USB drives that you want to share with Pogoplug.

Then, open up a browser window on a PC or Mac connected to your home network, and register your Pogoplug at my.pogoplug.com. You'll be sent a confirmation email, and you're ready to go.

Pogoplug USB connection

The Pogoplug takes any storage device with a USB connection → from a simple 2GB memory stick to a hard drive with a capacity of 1TB or more. If you wanted to, this could give you a total of many terabytes of data shared online via the Pogoplug.

One key strength of the Pogoplug is its compatibility. It'll read USB drives formatted in all the most widely used formats including FAT32, NTFS and MacOS. And according to its manufacturer, Cloud Engines, the Pogoplug works with Windows XP, Vista and 7, Mac OS X 10.5 and above, and Linux. And it's not fussy about browsers either – we used it successfully it in Google Chrome, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Pogoplug features

One of the clear advantages of a device such as the Pogoplug is that users can share files online without having to leave a PC permanently switched on. This could have both security and power-saving benefits. 

You can access the Pogoplug remotely either via a web browser or via apps on an iPhone or Android mobile phone. There's also standalone software available for PC, Mac and Linux that lets you access your Pogoplug without opening a web browser on your home PC or laptop.

Choosing which files to share with the Pogoplug is easy, and the software can automatically scan your PC or Mac's folders for music, photos and videos to share.

We haven't fully tested the speed of file transfer and sharing with the Pogoplug, but over a Wi-Fi network we found the speed acceptable, with little delay or lag when copying files to the device. Streaming files from a laptop or mobile phone over a home Wi-Fi network also worked well.

Sharing music and videos

To share videos so that they can be streamed will require each video to be transcoded – optimised for the web. We found this could take a while – a few minutes for even a short video clip. If you're hoping to stream entire films from your Pogoplug, you'll need to set aside some time for the device to transcode them before trying to watch them remotely. Videos play in pop-up windows in the web interface, and audio files play in a small media-player plugin in the bottom corner of the browser window. 

We tested music streaming of our MP3 file collection from a Virgin Media 10Mbps home broadband connection to our office and found no obvious problems, though the interface lacks advanced features such as the creation of playlists.

Pogoplug users can also create slideshows of photos, videos and music using the web interface, offering an alternative to photo-sharing websites. We found there wasn't much flexibility in slideshow options – for example we couldn't change the time interval for the photos to advance in the slideshow.

Sharing files with Pogoplug

The Pogoplug also allows you share your files with selected people over the web, offering an alternative to cloud-based technologies such as Google Docs, or file-sharing websites such as Rapidshare. A key advantage of Pogoplug is that there is no need to upload files to a separate server, which can be time-consuming, and also the Pogoplug has no limitations on file size or data capacity. 

Sharing is easy. You invite people via email to view your files – either your entire USB drives, or selected files or folders – and they get a personalised link to your shared data. The people you share the data with are not required to sign up to Pogoplug themselves, which simplifies the sharing process.

Pogoplug mobile apps

The Pogoplug apps for iPhone and Android are very similar in terms of their features. Both allow you to view shared files over Wi-Fi or 3G networks, stream compatible media files to your mobile phone, or download files for offline viewing. You can even upload files directly from mobile apps – for example saving photos and videos captured on your iPhone directly to the Pogoplug at home.

Pogoplug price and availability

UK consumers will be able to pre-order the Pogoplug for £99 from the Pogoplug website from Monday 1 February, and it will be available online from 15 February 2010. From late February John Lewis will also stock the Pogoplug in its stores and online.

Pros: Very simple online data sharing without a computer, mobile apps are a bonus

Cons: Expensive, considering it has no built-in storage