SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick
Before you stump up for that more expensive 128GB iPad, consider this
From £19.99 (16GB) to £69.99 (128GB) Manufacturer SanDisk, sandisk.co.uk
Needs iOS 8 or higher Capacity 16, 32, 64 or 128GB Features Wi-Fi, USB charging
Apple charges a premium for iOS devices with higher storage capacities, and doesn’t allow any removable storage. There’s a solution, though; this device is a self-powered flash drive with built-in Wi-Fi. The idea is that you plug it into your Mac using USB and, as it charges, copy video and other big files to it, even organising things in folders. When you’re on the move, switch it on and connect to the stick’s Wi-Fi network (a password is optional) and use the free iOS app to stream movies, music and other file types like pictures or PDFs from the drive to the device.
You can also set it to automatically back up photos from your device and choose to delete them from it, effectively freeing up lots of space on devices of low capacity. You can copy data from the stick back to the iOS device too, though copying whole folders isn’t supported, just individual files. It’s possible to stream to up to four devices at once, which will decrease the quoted 4.5-hour battery life a little. There’s an internet sharing facility in the app that’s supposed to let you keep using the internet while on the stick’s Wi-Fi, but this didn’t seem to work.
Nevertheless, this wireless stick, especially in the higher capacities, is a very cost-effective way to add a lot of storage to your iOS device, and it’s truly portable. For the sake of a couple of extra steps to get to your movies, it saves you a fortune on buying a higher capacity iPhone or iPad. Hollin Jones An affordable way to add a ton of very portable storage to an iOS device – great if you saved money buying one.
Affordable capacity boost
Streaming works very well
USB 2.0 is slow for large files
Internet sharing seems buggy