Product Description
With integrated Wi-Fi and four hours of battery life, Kingston’s new Wi-Drive offers pocket-sized portable storage and easy file sharing for mobile devices, including iPad, iPhone and Android devices. Accessing or sharing your personal media has never been easier. With Wi-Drive, you can add 32GB of space accessed wirelessly from your mobile device. The content can be shared by three people so you are no longer limited to the space available on your portable device. Whether at home, on the road or in a meeting, Wi-Drive lets you take more content with you without running out of storage space. Just load your files before you go and wirelessly access them from Wi-Drive when you need them.
| List Price: | $130.00 |
| Price: |
$57.55 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
| as of Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:03:03 GMT ***Remember, deals price on this item for sale just for limited time*** | |
Product Details
- Size: 32 GB
- Brand: Kingston
- Model: WID/32GB-A
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: .39" h x 2.43" w x 4.78" l, .25 pounds
- Hard Disk: 32GB
Features
- Wi-Fi enabled and Flash-based storage ensures against accidental data loss from drops, bumps and knocks so you can take your favorite media with you
- Wi-Drive adds up to 32GB of storage space for more of your favorite music, photos, videos, PDFs and more
- Wi-Drive lets you share your favorite media with three users simultaneously without any hassles
- Multiplatform wireless streaming so you can use any combination of mobile devices, whether iOS or Android-based mobile devices
- A great companion for Windows users on iPads, as it removes the frustration of using auto sync to view content
- Cable - miniUSB to USB cable included. User can upload files and content from their PC/Mac to the Wi-Drive using the USB cable
- Rechargeable Battery - up to four hours of continuous use
- Wireless Network Interface - Wi-Fi 802.11g/n with wireless security (WPA/WEP)
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
By DOBrien
The Kingston Wi-Drive is a portable hard-drive geared towards sharing media. Boasting a roomy 128GB internal SSD and streaming up to three devices, it's definitely worth a look. After taking the Wi-Drive on several road trips, I definitely got a good idea of what this drive can offer, and who might be interested in buying it. Kingston sent me a copy of the Wi-Drive for evaluation purposes.
Package Contents:
- Kingston Wi-Drive
- Power brick with USB out
- mini-USB cable
- Documentation
Now that we got basic information out of the way, let's take a closer look at the Kingston's Wi-Drive. The first thing I want to talk about is the design of the Wi-Drive. It is made of sturdy plastic, and is roughly the same size as an iPhone 4S. By keeping the Wi-Drive small and lightweight, Kingston have really geared this towards portable media sharing - it's slim enough to be put easily into a pocket or laptop bag.Using the drive (physically speaking) is beyond simple - there is one button on the right side to power on and off, and a USB-mini port for charging and data transfer. The Wi-Drive has an LED indicator built into the power button to indicate power (green), and will also turn orange when the battery is low. On the front of the device are two blue LEDs to let you know when the device is connected and the Wi-Fi network is being emitted. Battery life is good, sitting at around 3 hours with constant use, however I wouldn't mind seeing that number brought up a but even if it meant bulking the Wi-Drive a little.
Installation:
The installation for the Wi-Drive can be separated into two parts: desktop use and device use. For the desktop, it's an easy process: just plug in via USB and access via your file manager. I easily created a few folders for different media types (music/videos/etc.) and then transferred some files. Everything was pretty snappy, although I did wonder why Kingston didn't include USB 3.0 technology seeing as the internal drive is an SSD. Still, transfer speeds were more than acceptable. Setting up the Wi-Drive with my iPhone was also pain-free. Just download the Kingston app, turn on your Wi-Drive and then connect to the new wifi network that it emits.
Software:
The Wi-Drive can only be used with the Kingston app, so of course I want to talk about it for a little while. It's very simple, and I might venture to say overly so. You don't have a lot of options in terms of managing files, and the UI could use a little work. That said, it does what it is supposed to do and it's pretty smooth during playback. Even playing a 2GB movie didn't slow down the response times for controls, and that's really all I could ask for. The settings page allows you to upgrade the firmware, check the information on your network connection as well as change the Wi-Drive settings. Whether you want to rename your device, change its visibility or add security, this is the place to do it. Again, it's simple but it works.
Functionality:
As mentioned in the information from Kingston's page, the Wi-Drive is primarily a media playback device. It is absolutely perfect for streaming movies, TV shows and music and it does so for up to three devices. A quick check with a couple of iPhones and an iPad showed no issues whatsoever in streaming. Of course, you can store any file you want on this drive, making it a nice and portable hard-drive, however those files are not able to be accessed wirelessly. I should mention that the last sentence is the sole reason why I didn't give the Wi-Drive full marks in this review. I would LOVE to see them add PC compatibility for general wireless file sharing - I think they would really pick up some more users if people could bring their Wi-Drive to a business meeting, their place of work or even just to a family members house and have everyone been able to wirelessly access files.
Moving on, I found an interesting fact while browsing through the experiences of others with the Wi-Drive. Despite no official mention of charging the device while in use, several users mentioned that if you plug it in AFTER the wi-fi LEDs have turned blue, you can in fact charge the device while streaming content. I didn't notice any problems while doing so, and on a recent road trip I had it on for 5 hours while streaming a movie and it seemed to do just fine. In the first edition of the Wi-Drive there were some concerns about the device getting hot, however it seems they have addressed them and I can't say that it got any hotter than my iPhone does when being used for media.
Conclusion
The Wi-Drive is a great performer, and as a media device I think it really functions well. I loved being able to remove the majority of movies and music albums from my iPhone to make space for other important files, and carrying around this little drive is rarely (if ever) an inconvenience. Whether you're going on a long flight and want some extra movies with you or you just want to free up some space on your devices, I think this is a really good choice overall.
Some pros
- Lightweight, slim design.
- Streams to three separate devices.
- 128GB is a decent amount of space (in comparison to the capacity of most devices).
- Fast performance during file transfers.
Some cons
- Battery life could be improved some.
- No support for computers/non-media file sharing.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
By Richard J. Hagan
What fantastic bang for your bucks. For anyone looking to extend you iPad or iPhone this is the unit for you. I had to spend a week away from home and I loaded it up with Movies to watch. It's kinda hard to explain but I will try. When turned on after a few minutes it shows up under your network connection as Wi-Drive. Once selected it will connect to your iPad, iPhone or other portable devices. When pluged into your USB device on your computer it will appear on your computer as another drive where you can open and create any folders that you like. In a folder that I made called Movies I downloaded over 30 full length movies which could be accessed from my, in my case Apple device. The movies that I downloaded played without skipping a beat.
I would recommend this drive to anyone.
Rich
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
By J. Davis
Love this device, I have all my movies, music, and photos stored on it. Just load it like you would a flashdrive, and then sign into its wireless network. PLEASE NOTE, the app to use for viewing content doesn't work. Never did for me. YOU DON'T NEED IT. Just open a browser window and go to the device IP address, 192.168.200.254 and you can view all content without Internet.
Seller is great, got the item the very next day. Good packaging, brand new.
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