Apple on Tuesday unveiled its Time Capsule product, an unexpected data backup device from the leading maker of portable digital media players and other gadgets. The product is aimed at consumers and is easy to use, however, its main drawback is relatively low capacity: only 500GB or 1TB.

“Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila—all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day. With Time Capsule and Time Machine, all your irreplaceable photos, movies and documents are automatically protected and incredibly easy to retrieve if they are ever lost,” Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, described the ways the device functions.

Time Capsule combines an 802.11n base station with a server grade hard disk of 500GB or 1000GB capacity in one small package. The device can be used as a 802.11n access point, which ultimately increases value of the product, and can also serve up to 50 computers. In addition, Apple Time Capsule has three Gigabit Ethernet LAN and one Gigabit Ethernet WAN ports, one USB 2.0 ports. Like all advanced wireless devices, Time Capsule features Wi-Fi protected access (WPA/WPA-2), 128-bit WEP encryption; and a built-in NAT firewall supporting NAT-PMP for features like Back to My Mac.

Time Capsule will be available in February through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $299 for a 500GB Time Capsule and $499 for the 1TB version.