"The iXpand has the potential to be a wonderful accessory, especially
for portable storage. But it transfers data slowly, so be prepared to
use it for very small transfers that can't be made by other, faster
means."
For
Lightweight, sleek design
Viewing video on iPhone
Sharing files via Airdrop
Securing sensitive files
Against
Speed
Price
Could be obsolete with next-generation iPhones
iXpand Flash Drive by SanDisk
Introduction
My
wife and I recently returned from our honeymoon in the American
Southwest. We toured the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Lake Powell and the
Hoover Dam over the course of nine wonderful days. If
you haven't been to that part of the country, I highly encourage you to
go, especially to Lake Powell and Bryce Canyon, two of the most surreal
landscapes I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. But when you go,
there's something you must bear in mind: what the Southwest has in
gorgeous, magical, sun-drenched scenery it lacks in internet
connectivity. For my wife,
this wasn't much of an issue. She packed her Nikon D3000, and an extra
memory card, which allowed her to snap more than a thousand photos
without ever worrying about where she'd store them. I, however, was
armed only with my iPhone 5S, a choice I wouldn't have had much of an
issue with had we traveled to DisneyLand instead of the high elevation
and remote isolation of the Southwest. Because we were so
deep in the boondox and so high into the hills, there was no way for me
to offload the images I was taking without wiping old ones from my
camera roll. On my first day of this adventure, after having taken only
30-odd photos of the sunburnt Bryce Canyon hilltops, Apple curtly warned
me I was running low on storage. Embarrassingly, I hadn't backed up to
iCloud since activating my new phone and I wasn't exactly sure what was
copied and what wasn't. Without any internet, and with my
laptop back at the hotel, there was no way for me to copy the existing
photos in order to clear room for new images. I was forced to make a
hard choice: delete old pics or stop taking new ones. After wiping a few dozen forgettable pics and apps from my phone, I was ready to roll again. That
night, I went back to my hotel and offloaded my camera roll images onto
my MacBook Pro so that I would have plenty of room the next day to snap
a couple hundred more pics. I did this every night of the trip. I
tell you this story because SanDisk has created a very nifty (and
pricey) tool that would have solved a lot (but not all) of my storage
problems. The
SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive is a 2.53-inch tall and 1.4-inch wide USB
and Lightning connector that is meant for transferring data from mobile
device to mobile device or from mobile device to desktop. Available in
16GB, 32GB and 64GB models, the iXpand Flash Drive will come to market
for $69.99 (about £44, AU$80), $79.99 (about £50, AU$90), and $119.99
(about £75, AU$140) on BestBuy.com and on SanDisk.com
on November 14. The product will be available in Best Buy stores on
November 16. iXpand will be available in Europe from January 2015
onwards.The iXpand houses both the USB and Lightning
connector within a gray metal chassis. The Lightning connector is
attached to the chassis via a rubber tube that is just flexible enough
to protrude upward at a 45-degree angle into your mobile device. I broke
the tube when I pulled the connector up toward my iPhone 5S port, so be
careful. Luckily I only damaged the rubber without affecting the wiring
or I wouldn't have been able to test the unit.Once
it's plugged in, the iXpand immediately prompts you to download the
iXpand Sync app, which is where the magic happens. You're efficiently
walked through a series of prompts that explain how the device works and
how you can get started.A red plus button sits in the
middle of the app's interface. By clicking on the button, you prompt the
app to pull up your photos and videos so that you can select which
files to copy from your phone onto the flash drive. Just as you would
select which photos to move into a folder within your camera roll, you
click photos within the iXpand Sync app and you're ready to start
copying to the drive.
What you'll enjoy
Users
will love that you're able to automatically sync your camera roll to the
iXpand Sync app. Once you've ordered the device to sync to your phone,
each time you plug it into the device on which the app lives the drive
will automatically download your images onto the flash drive. The app is
smart enough to not overwrite old files, so you don't have to worry
about a lengthy rewrite process every time you plug the device into your
phone. You can also unclick the auto-sync button and disable the
functionality. My
personal favorite iXpand feature is its ability to play music and video
from the flash drive without having to permanently store the files onto
your device. Lets say you're in the mountains without internet access
and you want to watch Season Three of The Wire on your iPhone, you can
simply add the video files to your iXpand before you leave for your
trip, then you can plug the device in and click play.What's
awesome about the device is that it can house WMV, AVI, MKV, MP4 and
MOV files, so you don't need to worry about formatting the videos before
playing them. In almost any other circumstance you aren't able to load
and watch AVI and MKV files on iPhones and iPads. That means no watching
Stringer Bell go all Benedict Arnold on Avon Barksdale while Avon's
holding down the family in prison. I digress.The most
important feature of the iXpand is its data encryption functionality.
Small businesses and security-minded employees will love having the
ability to create two-step authentication on personal documents. Within
the app, you can create a password that will lock files you'd like to
secure. Once your password is created, you can select the files you'd
like to encrypt. If the files are locked, you can only view them when
you plug the device into a computer and enter your password.
Secondary use cases
The
iXpand is able to store Word docs, PDFs and most other file types. So
long as you have an app that can open the file on your phone, you can
pretty much store and view anything on the iXpand. This is great if you
want to access files ahead of a business meeting but you don't
necessarily want to make room for the files on your personal phone. I
also really like that I was able to Airdrop documents without actually
storing them on my phone. Here's what I mean: I pulled a few images off
my computer, plugged the iXpand into my iPhone and shared the images
with my wife without ever housing the files on my phone. That's
a pretty handy feature, especially if you're at a family function and
you have old photos and videos you'd like everyone to have access to,
but the files aren't stored on your phone. Rather than spending precious
family time uploading the images onto your phone in order to Airdrop
them, you can simply plug the drive in and drop the file to anyone who's
interested. If you're paranoid about uploading your
entire phone to the cloud, and you don't like iTunes, you can also use
this device to migrate from iPhone to iPhone. It can pull all your
photos, videos, music and contacts from your old device to your new
device. Flaws and verdict
If you've already convinced yourself to buy this device, then you might want to ignore the next five paragraphs. This
thing is slow. When uploading 246 images and three videos from my phone
to my computer using a standard issue Apple Lightning USB cord, it took
me two minutes. When uploading the same 246 images and three videos
from my phone to my iXpand, it took me 27 minutes. That's not a typo. 27 minutes. Because
I was shocked by how slow this thing was, I decided to rerun the test.
The second time I ran the test: Apple cord: 3 minutes, iXpand: 28
minutes. That's a wholly unreasonable speed for a device SanDisk is
billing as the fastest mobile-to-desktop flash drive it offers. If you
have your laptop around, I highly recommend you just transfer files the
old-fashioned way. There's one other thing that might
turn you off: because the iXpand features a Lightning-based connector,
it's highly possible the next generation of iPhones won't even be
compatible. If you're like me, and you're using an iPhone 5S, you're
probably due for an upgrade right around the time the iPhone 6S (or
whatever it's called) comes to market. Do you really want to gamble
$69.99, $79.99, or $119.99 on Apple using the same Lightning connector
format for its next generation of iPhones?
We liked
The
SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive is a great tool with a lot of awesome use
cases. Bring it with you when you're going to be moving around a lot and
you have spotty internet access. It's fantastic for securing basic
files and it can serve as a pretty handy media player if you don't want
to cram your phone with music and video files. iPhone photographers will
love having the iXpand around when they're going to be snapping away at
everything that catches their eye and they don't want to worry about
where to store it all. The iXpand is a tiny device that fits into your
pocket and it's lightweight enough that you'll hardly even know it's
there.
We disliked
Boy, is this thing slow. Two
separate tests prove that the iXpand gets trounced when competing with a
standard issue Apple Lightning USB cable. At $69.99, $79.99 or $119.99 I
expect my images to upload much quicker than they do on the iXpand. I'm
also not willing to spend this kind of money for what amounts to a
luxury accessory when I'm not even sure the device will be compatible
with my next iPhone.
Verdict
If you're looking
for quick, high volume data transfer, go elsewhere. If you're looking
for a tiny drive that can sync a few photos quickly, then this is the
right tool for you, but you might not want to pay such a hefty price for
portability.
