Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is considered one of the new generation hard drive recording technologies for increasing the data storage density. At its core, HAMR devices are dependent on plasmonic nano antennas, called near field transducers (NFT) to locally deliver heat to storage media. Hence, the design of NFT is crucial for an optimized HAMR device. Several types of NFT designs have been studied through optical and thermal simulations and are quantified using appropriate figures of merit. In addition, the possibility of exciting NFTs at a longer wavelength (1550 nm) has been studied, and it is found that there is a significant improvement of the thermal performance. The effect of having tapers in the geometry of the NFT and their role in improving the NFT thermal performance are also discussed. These studies point to different directions that performance of NFT can be improved. © 2018 The Japan Society of Applied Physics.