LaCie Reveals Four External Storage Devices at CES

In the misdt of CES of Las Vegas, NV, LaCie (now fully-owned by Seagate) introduced four new products.

1. Fuel : The Somehow Confusing Wireless Hard Drive

The first product of the pack is the LaCie Fuel.

To increase the capacity of iPad and also compatible with Apple TV to view moovies, this wireless drive is the result of a collaboration between the Seagate and the LaCie team of engineers for the first time, but it lacks the polish or innovative design usually associated with LaCie products.

Marketed as a companion for your nomadic life, it can act both as a repository for all photos, videos and documents and as a router to share an Internet connection. Once connected to the wifi hotspot, up to five devices can access the data stored on the disk through traditional file explorers or through an app designed for Windows, iOS and Android.

But for a consumer-oriented product, the device suffers from a few intriguing choices. The company decided to use the Seagate Media app for mobile devices, meaning that you have to use a Seagate App to access a LaCie drive. While it’s understandable for the company to use an app that already exists rather than developing its own, it makes for a more confusing end-user experience. A Dropbox integration is also on board but there is no word if we will see an integration of LaCie’s own cloud, Wuala, and the disk is not password-protected by default.

The products contains an 1TB HDD and will be sold at $199,99 (or €219.90 in Europe!) starting January 30.

2. Sphere, HDD, the Apple Way

LaCie’s second cooperation with Christofle, a French manufacturer of fine silver flatware, for Sphere is an external HDD  with an innovative spherical design.

With Sphere, the company tried to create an external HDD that could sits proudly on a desk, a hardware component as much as a piece of jewelry. It echoes what Apple has been doing for years with the same restrictions hardware-wise.

The 2.5-inch 1TB HDD included in Sphere is not removable and no additional storage space can be added. For its price, it’s a fine but limited piece of design. If the disk crashes, there is no easy way to access it. With the enclosure being the biggest driving cost of the hardware, an HDD replacement method would have been nice to see. The enclosure is being assembled and silvered in Christofle manufacturing plant in France.

The product is supposed to be released this month at a retail price starting at €400 ($490!) ). It comes with LaCie’s software protection suite, backup, password and eco mode.

3. Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt 2: Incremental Updates with Big Results

LaCie’s third released product is an update to its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt appliance. The first gen product, introduced in 2011, was one the first to include Thunderbolt technology and this new generation repeat the same scheme with Thunderbolt 2.

Re-using more or less the same design as the previous generation products, this new Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 appliance mainly improves on the connectivity and storage side of things. It boasts 2 PCIe Gen 2 500GB SSD in RAID-0, for a total raw storage capacity of 1TB.

Transfer rate is up to 1,375MB/s, more than twice as fast as the first gen Thunderbolt technology. It is one of the first appliance with Thunderbolt 2 on the market to date and it’s backward compatible with previous gen 1.

It is still mainly developed for 4K or 3D video editing and post-prod workflows but unlike the previous generation which was criticized for it’s tendency to be noisy, the thermo-regulated fans in this one are only turned on when necessary and produce few noise.

The product has currently no price but is said to be released during the first quarter of 2014. The first generation with Thunderbolt 1 will remain available.

4. Culbuto, Roly-Poly USB key

The last product announced is a USB key in the form of the old toy.

With this product, the company tries to innovate on the design of USB keys. It has an history with re-thinking USB key design with it’s key-shaped, Porsche designed or rugged key USB keys. This one is designed by French designer Constance Guisset who already did the cylindrical Xtremkey.

While the design of the product is not exactly travel-friendly, the company sees it more as an accessory that could stay on a work desk and be both useful and fun. The connector in itself is situated at the end of a rubber sterm and the protective cap also serve as a picture holder.

The key can be password-protected and comes with LaCie’s protection software suite and backup features. It is available in 16GB and 32GB model, starting at $50.