Kingston 64GB Wi-Drive Review – A PC Users Solution To Mac Storage

Some time ago, we sat with David Leong as part of Computex Taipei 2011 and he introduced a new product that Kingston was about to release called the Wi-Drive, an apparent Mac add-on.

Being the consummate PC Guy and (at that time) very vocal anti-Mac proponent, I moved on to Kingston’s HyperX SSD news and afforded the Wi-Drive the standard article entry, not believing that we would ever cross paths again.  Boy, was I wrong!

BACKGROUND

If you have been following along with TSSDR as of late, you will see that I have eased up a bit in my old age and am now affording Mac readers a bit of a read, whether it be to the benefit or disadvantage of Apple.  This article, of course, isn’t any different and it starts at the point of my crossing paths with my first IPAD.

As amusing as I found the IPAD for things such as checking the site, e-mailing and downloading some free Apps, it just wasn’t that practical and, as with other Macs, had a fatal flaw.  Whenever I wanted to upload or download anything, I had to synch through iTunes and I still can’t understand why Apple wouldn’t include a SD card slot as it takes up so little space. I finally figured out how to upload pictures but well, in order to keep my heart rate down, I’d rather not speak of my efforts in trying to delete pictures that I had uploaded through the sync process.

I wanted, after all, the IPAD to be as useful for work purposes as it could be in it’s every day use.  In the end, it started to become a toy and nothing else, a novelty and definitely not something that I could use for work purposes as a laptop or ultra replacement.  I don’t know how David knew of my difficulties or whether a reader here at the site contacted him, but next thing I knew a Kingston 64GB Wi-Drive was on it’s way.  Would you believe that the words ‘divine intervention’ come to mind as I write this and think about this whole fiasco now?

KINGSTON WI-DRIVE

The Kingston Wi-Drive is that simple bridge that we needed to get information from our PC to the Mac (IPAD in my case) without the need to synchronize or figure out whether you want to delete files from the original source or not.  It is definitely not a Mac add-on. For my use, the ability to ‘bridge’ is it’s most valuable characteristic but I would be negligent in not adding that it is actually so much more.  It is a NAS (network attached storage) device that lets you pick and choose which movies, photographs, music and documents you carry with you and watch, listen to or work on at any given time.  The best thing about it is easy to set up, use and even share your media with up to three people at the same time.

The Kingston Wi-Drive is a wireless storage device that, when connected to your PC via a USB 2.0 cable connected to the Wi-Drive, opens it’s own folder automatically and when connected to the iPAD, iPhone or iPod wirelessly, allows viewing, listening to or manipulation of data through it’s interface alone, or any of thousands of Apps available today.  It is available at Amazon in capacities of 16, 32 and 64GB and pricing at the time of this report is $80 (16GB), $59(32GB) and $119(64GB).  That’s right; the 32GB version is actually 67% off right now and you save $120 but, for some reason, I don’t think this will last.

For my purposes, it connects to my IPAD wirelessly via Wi-fi 802.11 g/n and includes wireless security (WPA/WEP) to include the ability to hide my network from others.  Along with IOS, it is now fully compatible with Android 2.2 and up and supports a host of file formats to include:

• Audio: AAC, MP3, WAV
• Video: m4v, mp4, mov, Motion JPEG (M-JPEG), AVI
• Image: jpg, bmp, tiff
• Document: pdf, doc, docx, ppt, pptx, txt, rtf, xls

Advertised battery life is four hours and, on my recent return to Niagara from beautiful San Jose, I hit 4.5 hours and it still hadn’t given up. Another interesting fact is that, while in the office, my trusty assistant walked a healthy distance and even outside of the building before the connection was lost.