How often have you been anxious about storing more songs or videos on your iOS devices because space is running out? At such times you either wish you had purchased the one with 32GB or even 64GB. What if you need more space than that? Well, we have already covered the Seagate GoFlex Satellite wireless drive for iOS devices. Today we’ll look at another option that’s just been made available in the market to expand you iOS device(s) storage space, the Kingston Wi-Drive.

The Kingston Wi-Drive is simply designed to expand the storage of your iOS devices by providing you an external, portable, hard drive for you to carry around.  The Wi-Drive, as the name suggests, is a wireless hard drive so that you can connect up to 3 devices simultaneously for streaming media off of it. You can connect both iOS as well as Android devices to the Wi-Drive; all you have to do is download the app from the App Store or Marketplace.

Now the Wi-Drive itself can only play media content that’s compatible with your iOS or Android device in the first place, so you have to be careful about what all you want to transfer in there. The Wi-Drive itself will show all the format media you have, but once you click on an unsupported format, it’ll simply stay there on screen like you never touched it.

Apart from the Home menu that shows all the files, you can view by Photos, Videos and Music. Apart from that you have settings menu where you can upgrade the firmware, connect to a network, and setup a password for your drive so that nobody random in a public place has access to your files. The password itself can be setup using WEP, WPA, WPA2 and WPA2 Mixed mode.

Going back to the Network Connections sub-menu; basically you connect your iOS or Android device to the Wi-Drive via a Wi-Fi connection. This essentially means you lose internet connection over your home or office Wi-Fi network. This is not an issue when you’re travelling outside, but when you’re at home or office, you’d also want internet access through your phone or tablet that’s connected to the Wi-Drive. Now the Seagate GoFlex Satellite had the exact same issue, but thankfully Kingston allows you to connect to your existing wireless connection from within the Wi-Drive app. You can basically piggyback your internet connection through the Wi-Drive, thereby having access to all your stored media on the Wi-Drive as well having internet connection through your usual Wi-Fi hotspot.

Of course, you won’t get the full speeds on this piggyback connection; the below SpeedTest results show the difference.

The first result is with the piggyback connection.

While connected to both an iPhone 4 and our recently tested Huawei Honor Android smartphone, continuously playing songs, the battery on the Wi-Drive lasted about 3 hours and 40 minutes. Kingston themselves have rated the battery at 4 hours, but with only one device connected. Not bad for short journeys.

There are two issues I want to mention before wrapping up this review. The first is that once the Wi-Drive is connected to a PC via the mini-USB port, the wireless connection will immediately stop. The Wi-Drive will act as a regular external storage device (formatted FAT32) and will also start charging simultaneously. Once unplugged, you can resume wireless operations again. However, be careful if you’re planning to put the Wi-Drive in your pockets because the area near the mini-USB port gets quite warm with the Wi-Fi on. Imaging you’re wearing double layers with a sweater on top during summer. It’s not impossibly hot, but very uncomfortable. Of course, this heat is concentrated in a small area, so that’s just something to think about.

So eventually the Kingston Wi-Drive is a good product, but with capacities of only 16GB and 32GB, it definitely is limiting. The price difference from and 8GB to 16GB to 32GB or 64GB iOS device (basically doubling the storage) is AED 400. The 16GB Wi-Drive sells for AED 299 while the 32GB goes for AED 499. Now whether this extra storage is worth the price, or whether you’re better off buying a large capacity iOS device in the first place is a decision you’ll have to make yourself.

At a press event today Kingston revealed details on several emerging market trends and introduced a new wireless storage solution designed for smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

Antoine Harb, Business Development Team Manager, MENA, Kingston Technology kicked off the presentation with an introduction and a recap of the company’s history. He then went on to focus on four major trends that the company had observed from its various channels. Firstly was the increase in users moving from traditional hard drives to SSD storage. The introduction of the Ultrabook has seen an increase in the demand for SSDs to keep both power consumption and form factor to a minimum. Users are also realizing the significant speed boost in using SSDs, and Kingston have released several high performance SSDs catering to different usage scenarios. The other trend the company observed is the roll out of USB 3.0 flash drives and storage solutions. Given the significant speed boost of USB 3.0 over traditional USB speeds, Kingston is set to release a slew of USB 3.0 compatible flash drives in Q2 of this year. Lastly Harb revealed that the company had seen a steady increase in the demand for its Hyper X memory modules, which again illustrated user demand for high-performance RAM.

Harb then went on to talk about the company’s latest product, the Kingston Wi-Drive. This sleek device doubles as a wireless storage solution for devices such as smartphones, tablets, and even laptops and PCs. Released in 16GB and 32GB models, the device allows users to connect the device to a PC and store data on the drive like a traditional USB disk. When disconnected from the PC, the drive turns on its wi-fi signal, which allows tablets and smartphones to connect to the broadcasting wi-fi and access data on the drive via a specially designed app. The app is currently available for iOS and Android devices, and is free to download from the respective app stores.

Once downloaded, it’s a simple task of launching the app, connecting to the wireless drive, and then flipping through the various content folders. Music, pictures, movies – all of these can be streamed wirelessly to your device, effectively doubling or tripling the amount of storage space available to you. So instead of trying to cram all of your music or movies onto your iPad, you can store them on the Wi-Drive and stream them directly to your iPad. Most common file formats are supported, and playback is limited only to the device’s operating system.

The Wi-Drive 16GB will retail at AED 299, and the 32GB model will be priced at AED 499. With a four hour battery life with up to three users accessing and sharing data consecutively, the Wi-Drive is the perfect device for users who are looking for an affordable and portable storage expansion for their gadgets.

Stay tuned for our review of the Wi-Drive in coming weeks.

Size does matter, especially in the world of gadgets. Bigger screens, smaller phones, larger capacity drives – it seems everything around me is either expanding or shrinking. So I was rather nonchalant when I received the Belkin Surf N150 USB Wireless Micro Adapter for review. The device is a little bigger than my thumbnail, so I was interested to see if this little gem could live up to the task of being my wireless interface for the day.

Installation is very simple and is just a matter of popping in the supplied CD and then plugging the Belkin adapter in. I disabled my laptop’s Wi-Fi and instantly the Belkin Wireless Adapter kicked in with a flashing blue light, and Windows prompted me to connect to my home network. The device is compatible with most forms of wireless security such as WPS, WPA and WEP. Once I was connected, performance was quite good with streaming videos off my network drive, and I found that I was able to continue surfing upstairs in the guest bedroom where I previously wasn’t able to pick up a Wi-Fi signal. But strangely enough when I walked out into the garden, the signal suddenly dropped to just one bar, even though my router was just a few feet away behind a wall. I never had any issues with using my onboard Wi-Fi outside, so this was a bit peculiar.

The true beauty of the N150 Wireless Adapter is surely its size. Measuring just 18mm x 15mm, you can plug it into your laptop or desktop and completely forget about it. It’s almost flush with the side of my laptop, so it doesn’t cause any problems at all when I slide my laptop back into its carrier case. If you do decide to take it out, I suggest putting it someplace safe as it nearly disappeared into the depths of my bag!

Speeds using the Belkin N150 were overall satisfactory. It took me 14 minutes to transfer a 1.67GB file from my laptop to my network drive and just over 12 minutes to copy the same file with my onboard Wi-Fi. Apart from the issues with wireless coverage outside, I was able to stream comfortably from my media centre as well as YouTube without any interruptions. The only downside is that this is a Windows-only device (Ubuntu was able to detect it as a Belkin wireless adapter) and will not work on a Mac.

If you’re looking for a quick wireless replacement for your Windows based laptop or want to add some Wi-Fi to your desktop PC, then this little gem is for you. Its easy installation and ridiculously small footprint will charm most users, though be wary of the device’s drop in performance if you wander into the great outdoors.

Portable hard drives have become the quint-essential accessory for a notebook user and with newer notebooks coming in with smaller but faster SSD drivers, the requirement for a large capacity drive to put your media and backups on is higher than ever. We take a look a quick look at one such product today- the WD My PassPort for Mac.

What makes this drive “for Mac” is the fact that it comes pre-formatted with HFS+ which is the native file system used by Macs. This means that you can pretty much plug this drive in any of the newer Macs and use it right away for reading and writing files as well as creating backups with Time Machine. Let me point out that any portable hard drive is capable of this but most of them come formatted with FAT32 or NTFS and need to be reformatted by your Mac to HFS+ which is just an extra step.

The other thing that makes this WD drive “for Mac” is, obviously, the design. It’s almost a pre-requisite for any Mac product to look good and My Passport does well but not necessarily great in this aspect. I like the minimal design but the plastic enclosure isn’t very Mac like. Also, I found the drive to be a tad bit chunky- especially when put next to the MacBook Air. However, this has more to do with the current level of technology than anything else. If you want something slimmer, you will have to settle for lower capacity for now.

My Passport for Mac has a pretty clean design with just one USB port and an LED next to it. WD bundles a USB cable with the drive along with warranty information. On the drive, WD bundles two applications that you can install on your Mac. WD Drive Utilities lets monitor the status of your hard drive using SMART as well as run diagnostics and quick tests along with erasing the drive. WD Security on the other hand password protects your hard drive. An update to both these utilities was available for download when I initially launched them which is good as it tells you that WD is keeping stuff up to date.

There’s not really much else that can be said about USB 2.0 portable drives. Their performance has been saturated by the speed of the USB 2.0 port and that holds true for My Passport for Mac as well which posted speeds of just under 40 MB/s in both read and write tests. While this is good enough for general reading and writing of files, expect to wait a while if you plan on moving high-definition movies to and from this drive. Initial Time Machine backup will also take a while but subsequent ones should be fast.

Priced at around AED 800, the WD My Passport for Mac is quite a bit on the pricey side- something Mac users are accustomed to. While it offers a decent design and plenty of storage, I see no reason why you cannot get one of the other, cheaper USB 2.0 alternatives even if it isn’t for the Mac and just format it in HFS+ and use it like this drive. The added utilities bundled with the drive don’t really add much value and can be found around the web for free.

Streaming boxes should be the norm in every modern household nowadays. There is just too much media online not to have one hub hooked directly to your TV. While there are many options available locally, Western Digital’s media boxes have always had a major presence in the market. Today I’ll be looking at the latest WD TV Live.

In the past we’ve had some forms of WD TV media boxes, most notably the WD TV Live Hub which comes with a 1TB hard drive built-in. The first thing you’ll notice about the WD TV Live differing from WD TV Live Hub, apart from the price difference, is the incredibly small footprint. Whereas WD TV Live Hub has a very low profile and sleek design, the new WD TV Live is very boxy. Even so, the matt black finish makes it very easy to blend with your existing setup.

Measuring just 125x100x30mm, the WD TV Live weighs a mere 200 grams. The front has a simple transparent plastic plate which just shows the white activity LED (which can be turned off) and a USB port. On the rear you have the power plug, Optical out, LAN input, HDMI out and another USB port, finished off with an old school AV out port.

Pretty much the entirety of the bottom panel has holes in it, with the bottom of the circuitry having a large metal plate. And unlike the WD TV Live Hub, there’s no fan in the WD TV Live, so the entire thing is passively cooled. You’ll only be thankful for this when the WD TV Live is in standby mode, because the WD TV Live Hub would have its fan running almost all the time.

Included in the box is the power cable, manual, the remote control plus batteries. The remote control itself is identical to the WD TV Live Hub, which means it has the same irritatingly long rubber buttons. The layout, however, is nice and simple to use.