My Passport Wireless SSD VS PRO: It’s An Easy Choice

You’ve noticed that these drives are both from the same company. And have very similar names.

It’s confusing.

Want to know what is the difference?

And why you’d buy one rather than the other?

Main Differences Comparison Table

My Passport Wireless SSD What Is It? And When Would You Want One?

My Passport Wireless SSD is a portable, take with you Wi-Fi enabled external drive.

Why would you want one?

The main reasons you’d want this external drive.

Is if you need a drive to take with you to store your photos and video footage on while you’re out and about.

When you’re a photographer. Or drone operator recording your latest mountain bike trail adventure on your GoPro.

When you find yourself in a tight spot.

Your SD card is rammed full. And you need somewhere safe to download your footage to so you can go take some more.

That’s exactly when you’d use this drive.

Or maybe you’re after an entertainment drive. Somewhere you can put your movies, video footage or music files.

So that when you’re in the car and want to entertain the kids. Or on holiday at a camp site. You can stream from there to your various smart pieces of kit. Be it a mobile phone or tablet.

Or you want somewhere to copy your photos and videos onto from your smart phone or tablet. IPhone or iPad. And you don’t want to put it in the cloud. And your laptop is already full.

You can pick this Wi-Fi drive to use.

And the great thing about your WD My Passport Wireless SSD is inside the box is a solid state drive. That’s why it’s called an SSD.

So what?

SSD’s have no moving parts inside. SSD’s write your files and read your files off the drive electronically.

My Passport Wireless Pro What Is It?

It’s in many ways the same as the My Passport Wireless SSD. A portable, Wi-Fi drive designed for holding images, photos, videos and music.

But.

You’ll find inside it’s a mechanical hard drive.

So what?

Mechanical drives have moving components inside them.

Mechanics that physically read your files from. And write your files to the drive.

And the crucial thing about mechanical drives is that they are less robust. A drop out of your bag onto a hard surface could break your drive.

And mean that you loose all that’s on it.

And movement or shaking while your drive is working can also damage your drive.

So you have to take more care of your mechanical hard drive.

Ok, no brainer you’re thinking, I’ll get the SSD one.

SSD drives come with a price tag.  More on that later.

My Passport Wireless SSD Pros

My Passport Wireless SSD Cons

My Passport Wireless SSD | Editing in the Field

Video Credit: WD

My Passport Wireless Pro, Pros

My Passport Wireless Pro Cons

My Passport Wireless Pro Product Overview

Video Credit: WD

What’s The Same On The My Passport Wireless Pro v SSD?

You’ll find a lot that’s the same on these two drives.

And a bonus point is when you’re downloading your videos and photos over Wi-Fi. From your phone tablet or SD card you won’t need your laptop there to do it.

Passport Wireless Pro v SSD Wi-Fi

You’ll find Wi-Fi standards that are the same.

They are both dual band wireless drives.

They’ll support the faster 5 Ghz Wi-Fi protocol for your newest gadgets. And 2.4 Ghz for your gadgets that aren’t quite as new.

And broadcast to both types at the same time.

Number Of Your Gadgets Wireless Pro V SSD Will Stream To

You can stream to up to 8 of your gadgets at the same time.

Wireless SSD Vs Pro SD Card Reader Slot

It’s one of the main features of these drives that you have an SD card reader right there on the drive.

Both the SSD and Pro wireless drive can read SD 2.0 cards and SD 3.0 cards. SD 2.0 at up to 25 MB/s. And SD 3.0 at up to 65 MB/s.

Ideal when you need to offload your footage far from home.

With a single button, you can choose to copy onto both drives. Or set up your wireless drives to copy over your footage and leave your SD card empty so you can go film some more.

Plugging In your SSD or Wireless Pro Into Your Computer

On both you’ve a USB type A plug on the cable end that goes into your computer or laptop.

If you’ve a computer with USB C ports, then you’ll need a USB Type A to USB C Adaptor.  Just plug in and away you go.

Why would you plug in?

Yes, you’re probably thinking I’ll just upload anything I want from my laptop onto the drives over Wi-Fi.

But when you’ve loads to upload it’ll take forever.

Plugging into your computer is the fastest way to upload on either the wireless SSD or Pro.

Use Your SSD or Wireless Pro As A Media Server

And when you want to stream and view your videos and movies on both drives. You’ve the choice of a DLNA Plex and Twonky server.

What’s that?

You can stream your media from your Wireless Pro. Or Wireless SSD to the DLNA supporting gadgets around your home.

Both wireless drives support the same audio, picture image and video standards.

And they support 4k video. Woohoo.

Drive Format of WD My Passport Wireless SSD and Pro

They both come out of the box NTFS formatted as of firmware level 1.04.

And if you’ve a Mac you’ll have use the supplied Paragon NTFS software driver.

Mac’s can read NTFS but can’t write to an NTFS formatted drive.

You’ll need to use the driver to write your content up onto either drive.

And while we’re on the subject of Macs.

You won’t be able to do a Time Machine backup from your Mac over Wi-Fi onto either of these wireless drives.

Using Either as a Power Bank

Picture your out and about taking footage and you need to make a call.

And annoyingly your phone’s battery is flat.

But you’ve a cable in your backpack.

As long as it’s a type A cable you can use the USB 2.0 slot on either drive to power up your phone.

As long as you’ve charge in your WD My Passport Wireless SSD or Pro then you can charge another of your gadgets.

It’s a slow charge but a charge nonetheless.

My Passport Wireless SSD Vs Pro What’s Different?

Apart from the drive types they have inside. Here are some other differences.

Battery on the Wireless Pro V SSD

You’ve a 6400mAh on your Wireless Pro drive.

And a 6700mAH batter on your Wireless SSD, as SSD drives take more power to run.

SSD v Wireless Pro Drive Speed

Both drives support USB 3.0 standards. And in theory can go up to 5 Gb/s.

Reality is different.

Your WD My Passport Wireless Pro should see you reading and writing your files at around 80 mb/s. When you’re plugged into your computer’s USB port.

Your WD My Passport Wireless SSD in contrast should see you getting around 388 Mb/s when plugged in.

So you see SSD is way faster.

WD My Passport Wireless SSD VS Pro Costs

You’ll find your costs versus capacity totally different.

Your My Passport Wireless SSD starts at around $200 for the smallest 250GB drive. And rises up to $600 for the 2TB drive.

Your Wireless Pro in contrast starts at around $130 for a 1TB drive. And goes up to $200 for the 4TB drive.

You’re looking at a 4TB drive on the My Passport Wireless Pro for the cost of a 250GB SSD drive.

Quite a difference.

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