LaCie Intros Calbuto & Fuel Storage Drives, Wirelessly Expand Your iPad's Capacity To 1TB

LaCie never disappoints when it comes to creating unique, ingenious storage solutions for the consumer market. And at CES 2014 the company is showing off a few of its latest offerings that are just as unique in their design as we've all come to expect. The Calbuto is LaCie's latest USB key storage drive that is designed as a self-standing, upright bobbing desk accessory when not plugged into one of your USB ports. The specially designed USB cap tip of it can hold and display a photo or a business card. Made out of black rubber and a weighty, golden metal ball-head-like base, the Calbuto features USB 3.0 and is available in 16GB and 32GB storage capacities for $50 and $80, respectively.

Moving onto much larger storage devices, LaCie's new Fuel is a $200 portable external wireless hard drive with 1TB of internal storage capacity designed to provide additional storage for iPad users without using any cables. Users can wirelessly share, transfer, access and sync their data such as movies, music, photos and documents across 5 different devices including Macs - as well as stream their content directly from the Fuel drive to an Apple TV or other AirPlay devices. The Fuel drive also allows up to three devices to stream an HD movie that may be stored on it simultaneously using the LaCie Seagate Media WiFi hard drive iOS app.

LaCie's Fuel boasts an interesting metal fuel canister-inspired design, 10 hours of battery life from a single charge, and by creating its own WiFi network, the Fuel can connect to iOS devices without internet access in order to transfer and share files. Users can also use the Fuel's USB 3.0 connectivity to transfer data from a computer which LaCie claims will be quicker when wanting to move large files across. It'll be available soon, LaCie says, for $200.

Lacie Blade Runner External Hard Drive Designed By Philippe Starck

 

We just had an OMG that is so awesome moment looking at Lacie's new and limited edition Blade Runner external hard drive designed by French designer, Philippe Starck. With a 4TB storage capacity as standard and USB 3.0 connection, the Blade Runner has to be the most artistically designed hard drive ever made. It's made with an aluminum casing designed with large vertical fins or blades as they call them, which double as a heatsink for cooling the drive enclosed inside what looks like a morphed liquid metal blob. Not that it needs such gaudy cooling, but think of it as a practical art form. The exterior plus mark glows orange against the darkened aluminum surface when the drive operates. Lacie has yet to release further details, but all we know is it'll cost a modest $300. Only 9,999 Blade Runner drives were produced.

 

LaCie XtremeKey USB 3.0 Designed To Withstand It All

 

LaCie's obsession for protection has brought us another marvelous, external and portable storage device with epic rugged proportions. The XtremeKey is LaCie's USB 3.0 thumb drive housed inside a tightly sealed - waterproof, fireproof and dropproof brushed aluminum enclosure which to us, actually looks like some extravagantly designed fishing weight. The 2mm-thick aluminum enclosure which is designed by French designer, Constance Guisset, can also withstand extreme pressure of 10-tons. What's more, the XtremeKey is digitally protected using AES 256-bit encryption and is small enough to tag along on your keychain. The internal 32GB or 64GB capacity options yield insanely fast data transfer speeds of up to 230Mbps via USB 3.0. LaCie's XtremeKey is currently available in a 32GB capacity for $85, while the 64GB version will be available next month.

 

Seagate Acquires LaCie For $186 Million

If you have recently looked into Thunderbolt connectivity, then you might have come across the blazingly fast speeds that LaCie’s Thunderbolt Series Hard Drives promises. Being one of the few companies to have produced Thunderbolt capable products, LaCie caught the attention of a lot of major computer geeks, as well as Seagate, one of the largest data storage manufacturers today. They recently acquired the French storage company for a reported $186 million. Mixing LaCie’s premium storage products with Seagate’s massive customer base, we should be looking forward to some major releases from Seagate.

The New LaCie Rikiki Go External 1TB Drive

The new Rikiki Go external portable drive is now available in 1TB and 500GB storage capacities with an integrated USB 2.0 flat cable. You can get yours now in a modern aluminum enclosure. The 1TB model will run you $149.99 and $89.99 for 500GB. 

Source LaCie