Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on FacebookPatriot Gauntlet Node 320 Review: Wireless Storage for Tablets
@ 2012/11/23One side effect of the current march towards ultramobility is the nearly complete abandonment of expandable/upgradeable local storage. No modern smartphone or tablet allows for upgradeable internal storage, and it's not exactly common to find microSD slots or USB ports on them either. This is particularly a problem if you're shopping with Apple, where expandable storage has never been a part of the iPhone or iPad. As a result, you're encouraged to buy enough storage to last you until the next upgrade - as well as rely heavily on cloud based storage and streaming services.
Huge amounts of high performance NAND can be pricey. Modern SSDs are finally below the $1/GB price point, which when applied to a tablet should mean that the difference between 16GB and 32GB of storage is no more than $20. The reality however is far worse. NAND costs even less than the ~$1/GB that we pay when buying an SSD, and manufacturers tend to charge anywhere from $50 for 16GB to $100 in the case of Apple. For lower cost devices there may not even be higher capacity versions. All of the sudden that simple solution of just buying as much storage as you need up front becomes a lot more complicated. If you take into consideration the fact that smartphones and tablets are quickly replaced with much better versions, there's a good chance that you'll want a new device before you run out of storage if you buy the largest capacity offered.
Huge amounts of high performance NAND can be pricey. Modern SSDs are finally below the $1/GB price point, which when applied to a tablet should mean that the difference between 16GB and 32GB of storage is no more than $20. The reality however is far worse. NAND costs even less than the ~$1/GB that we pay when buying an SSD, and manufacturers tend to charge anywhere from $50 for 16GB to $100 in the case of Apple. For lower cost devices there may not even be higher capacity versions. All of the sudden that simple solution of just buying as much storage as you need up front becomes a lot more complicated. If you take into consideration the fact that smartphones and tablets are quickly replaced with much better versions, there's a good chance that you'll want a new device before you run out of storage if you buy the largest capacity offered.
