We like ourselves extra storage up to the following guy, and we also happen to hate cables as much the following guy, so whenever a tool promises some extra wiggle room without strings attached, we’re all ears. The AirStash is a wireless flash drive that permits you to expand the capacity of your mobile device as much as 32GB at a time through swappable SD cards, freeing up local storage for apps and so forth. We first got our paws on one back at CES , but now that it is a shipping product and has a finalized iOS app, we gave it a brief shakedown as promised to determine whether this gadget is worth dipping into your own stash for.
The AirStash is way just like the Seagate GoFlex Satellite harddrive we reviewed earlier this month, but unlike the GoFlex it is a BYO storage affair. It’s essentially an SD card reader that creates its own WiFi network, enabling you to access the content on whichever card is inserted so long as you’re connected to the network it emits. Cards as much as 32GB in size are supported, and you may load up any sort of content your heart desires — but more on that during a moment.
Size-wise, the AirStash is reasonably portable, clocking it at 1.9 x 3.6 x 0.5-inches in size it’s certainly sufficiently small to toss in a bookbag. It has got a USB port on one end for file transfers out of your PC and to deal with charging duties, while the SD card slot is on the opposite end. We should always mention that after inserted, the cardboard is 0 essentially flush 0 with the brink of the AirStash itself. We found it a little bit difficult to take away the cardboard, needing to dig a fingernail within the small indentation at the periphery of the SD card to get a grip on it. We would’ve much preferred a form of “push to eject” method that might make swapping cards easier. It’s quoted to get around five hours of battery with continuous streaming, and though we didn’t perform any scientific testing, it hasn’t died within the week we’ve been using it off and on for this review.
AirStash has a built-in web server for file-sharing, and we’re told that as much as eight people can connect with the identical one simultaneously (but we are not nearly that popular). The fatal flaw of the AirStash is in its WiFi implementation, however; because it creates its own wireless network, when in use you lose your internet connection. To make matters worse, any time you might want to use the AirStash, you need to manually switch WiFi networks after which switch back. This does not appear as if much of a difficulty, but becomes annoying when you are like us and turn between apps regularly. We also noticed that the AirStash network shuts down when plugged into USB, so that you can’t access files out of your PC in real time.
Though the corporate claims all you must access files is a tool with an internet browser — except the BlackBerry Playbook, interestingly enough — there’s also a dedicated iOS app tailored for the iPhone and iPad. It’s essentially a file browser, but has some nifty features specifically for iOS. First of all, you could import photos from a memory card, either individually or by directory. We would like there have been an technique to selectively choose multiple items at a time, and maybe that’ll are available in a future version of the software. Also, there isn’t any indicator within the app, so things can get hairy when transferring a considerable amount of files.
You too can store video and audio files on an SD card and stream them to the i-device, even though they’re protected by iTunes DRM. We were bummed to find that the AirStash+ app doesn’t support background audio, so while you leave the app you lose whatever was playing. You can even store documents in your SD card for speedy access in other apps. Because the dongle supports the open WebDAV standard, you possibly can mount it as a server in apps like GoodReader and browse / write files on to it wirelessly. We’re still not quite sure what the advantage will be over completely cloud-based solutions like Dropbox, but when you’re paranoid about privacy and wish to maintain your data locked down, AirStash’s solution may be worthwhile.
The AirStash is an exceptional option in case you are seeking to add storage for your device and feature a stack of SD cards lying around. Dragging and dropping a video to an SD card and streaming to an iPad is far more enjoyable than anticipating a 1 needlessly long iTunes sync 1 , and we’re definitely fans of this straightforward workaround. Not having to buy Apple’s Camera Connection kit is usually a pleasant value proposition, though the import options aren’t as robust as we need. Overall, this device is well for a undeniable crowd of folks, but when Apple’s storage options just aren’t cutting it, it’s your decision to offer the AirStash a correct once-over.
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I like the Airstash because it trims down my load of gadgets if and when I’ll travel. The only problem I have with it is it only syncs with the Apple gadgets. I only have an iPod Nano. It would be great if it would be able to sync with other devices.