Why You Can Trust CNET SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive review: A tiny yet versatile Wi-Fi storage device
Looking to carry some extra content on the go, share hot-spot access, and preview your freshly taken photos or video? The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive is your best pal.
Its supersmall size is not the only cool thing about the SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive.
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The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The new device is the latest to join the long list of battery-operated Wi-Fi storage devices and is the first from SanDisk, a major maker of flash-based storage devices. It comes with up to 64GB of built-in flash memory. However, users can expand its capacity to up to 192GB -- possibly even more in near future -- thanks to its built-in standard SD card slot. The card slot also means that you can quickly view or share photos and video shot by a digital camera, on or with up to eight Wi-Fi devices at a time.
The new device worked well in my testing as a mobile media-streaming and backup server, but as a USB-connected portable drive it was very slow. However, at just $100/AU$180 (or $82/AU$140 if you get the 32GB version), it still makes a great accessory for tablet or smartphone owners or photographers who want to carry some extra content on the go and be able to back up, preview, and share content as well as hot-spot Internet while traveling. For alternatives that offer better performance, and much larger storage space, check out those on this list.
Compact and versatile
The Media Drive is a tiny square box that's only 2.6 inches wide and 0.52 inch tall. And it's quite amazing what it has packed inside: a battery that offers about 8 hours of usage, up to 64GB of built-in storage space, and a 802.11n Wi-Fi network. Best of all, it comes with a built-in SD card slot, which means you can add more storage to it. Since SD cards now offer up to 128GB, you can pack an impressive amount of data into this tiny device.
| Drive type | Flash-based external USB storage device with built-in internal Wi-Fi access point and battery |
| Connector options | USB 2.0 |
| Size (WLH) | 2.6 inches by 2.6 inches by 0.52 inch/66.01mm by 66.01mm by 13.8mm |
| Weight | 2.7 ounces/70.8g |
| Apps included | SanDisk Media Drive for iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, and Android-based devices |
| Available capacities | 32GB, 64GB, plus one SD card |
| OSes supported | iOS 5.1 or later (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), Android (2.2.3 or later), Kindle Fire, Microsoft Windows XP or later, Mac OS 10.6 or later |
| Max concurrent Wi-Fi clients supported | 8 (only 5 for HD video streaming) |
| Mobile streaming format supported | Video: MP4, MOV (iOS only), M4V (iOS only) | Audio: MP3, M4A (iOS only) | Image: JPG, PNG | Documents: DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF |
The addition of an SD card slot means more than just storage expansion. You now can quickly share or preview movies or photos taken with a digital camera on a screen larger than that of the camera itself, while saving the camera's battery. I tried it with my Nikon D5100 and this worked out very well.
In addition to working as a battery-operated mobile storage device, the Media Drive can also work with a computer via its Micro-USB 2.0 port. When connected to a computer using a standard USB cable (one is included), the device appears to the computer as a portable external drive that you can drag and drop data on to. The device is preformatted using the exFAT file system, which means it will work with both Macs and Windows computers without any restriction. When plugged in, the device will also charge its internal battery. You can also choose to charge via an included power adapter.
Well-designed mobile app that's Internet-sharing-ready
Like other Wi-Fi storage devices, the Media Drive is designed to be controlled by a mobile app. It comes with a free SanDisk Media Drive app that is available for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire devices. This app worked very well in my testing. It automatically organized content into four categories, Videos, Photos, Music, and Files, regardless of the location you copy the file to, be it the Media Drive's internal storage or the connected SD card. The drive scans for new media files in real time; this process took a very short time in my trials. For example, just about a second after I had inserted an SD card, movies and photos stored on the card had already appeared in the respective category.
Alternatively, you can access the drive's storage via folders and subfolders.
You can swipe through a photo album or folder quite conveniently. You can also play a file or an album automatically, or add the file to the mobile device to play back later. When viewing a photo, you also have options to share it via social media or e-mail. All of these options are tightly integrated. With music, background playing is supported, meaning the music will stay on when you close the app to open another app. This is a great feature if you want to listen to music and check your e-mail at the same time.
And you can totally do that with the Media Drive since, using the app, you can change its settings and set the drive to connect to another Wi-Fi network. After that, it will relay the Internet access of the other Wi-Fi network and share that connection with the rest of the devices connected to its own Wi-Fi network. This feature is very useful in case you want to share a Wi-Fi hot spot while traveling. It helps save money -- since you only need to pay for one device, and time, because you don't need to manually connect multiple devices to a new Wi-Fi network.
The Media Drive can only work as either a portable external drive or a media server at a given time. However, its Internet-sharing feature works no matter what. In other words, even when you connect the drive to a computer to copy data over onto it, it still can continue to relay the Internet for the connected device, even though the streaming feature is now no longer available.
Limited support for playback file formats, great for photo backup
Like other Wi-Fi storage devices, the Media Drive is just storage expansion when it comes to media streaming; the device itself doesn't convert or optimize the content you put on it. As such, the supported streaming formats are at the mercy of the connected device.
In other words, Media Drive just stores the files and makes them available for streaming. The actual playback on mobile devices depends each device's playback capabilities. Movies recorded by iOS devices will play back just fine on any iOS device, but not necessarily on an Android device, and vice versa. Technically, you can use third-party apps to play back unsupported files but most of the time this means you have to first download the file from the Media Drive onto the mobile device itself, which is not really a viable solution for movies due to large file sizes involved.
Note that though up to eight Wi-Fi devices can connect to the Media Drive's Wi-Fi network at a time, only five of them will be able to stream HD content simultaneously.
The Media Drive also works very well as a backup destination. Using the mobile app, you can easily transfer files from a mobile device and store them on the Media Drive. I found this worked best with documents and photos, with each photo taking about a second to be backed up. You can back up multiple items at a time.
Performance
The Media Drive worked well as a Wi-Fi storage server, offering very good range for its size and decent Wi-Fi speed. It supports single-stream 802.11n so the speed is capped at just 150Mbps. Most of the time, however, devices are connected to it at half of that, which is normal for Wi-Fi. As mentioned above, its mobile app is very well-designed and responsive. I was also able to get about 10 hours of battery life out of the drive using it with two devices at a time.
As a USB 2.0 portable storage device, however, it was very slow, offering only about 14MBps for reading, about half of a typical USB 2.0 drive, and merely 4MBps for writing, about one-sixth the speed of a typical drive. At this speed, it'd take you some 4.5 hours to fill 64GB of storage space. Consequently, it might be a better idea to use an SD card if you want to quickly add extra content before an impromptu trip.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Read | | Write |
Other than that, the device worked well without any hiccups. It was also very quiet and remained cool at all time.
Conclusion
The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive would make an excellent Wi-Fi storage device if it offered faster performance when working as a portable drive. In its current state it's still a very good device that enables you to carry extra content, share hot-spot Internet access, and back up data. The device's built-in SD card slot is also a helpful extra, especially for photographers.