On our most recent family vacation, we ran into an offline storage dilemma. My son wanted some movies on his mobile device and my daughter wanted a few on hers – all while not deleting any of the apps or photos that they had stored. Needless to say, this is difficult to do with only 16 gigs of storage per device. I know this is definitely a first-world problem, but road trips without entertainment can sometimes wear down the fun factor.
I decided to take a look at wireless mobile storage drives and I was very impressed with the options out there. I first looked at the WiFi-enabled portable drives that are available through Seagate, Toshiba or Western Digital. They have tons of storage, some in terabytes, and stream data via WiFi signal to linked mobile devices. I found a new entry to the market offered by Kingston, however, that really caught my eye.
The MobileLite Wireless G2 is labeled as a media reader but it does so much more. First of all, it works just like the portable drives that I previously mentioned. It connects to mobile devices via a WiFi signal and allows streaming of media to the those devices. The major difference is that it does not have on-board storage built-in. It allows the user to insert SD, MicroSD and even USB drives to stream media from. This proved to be a boon with the low price of USB thumbdrives in the market. We stored ten movies on one drive that provided hours of entertainment! We also could take the SD card from our camera and plug it directly in the MobileLite and stream new photos immediately to all our connected devices – very cool at Disney World.
The MobileLite also includes an ethernet port to allow it to function as a portable router. This was great when hooked into our hotel room’s wired internet connection. Sure the room had wireless access, but everyone knows that when you are sharing wireless with a bunch of people, it gets really slow. Problem is solved with your own router! Finally, the MobileLite can act as a backup battery for any mobile device. It has its own battery to run on as a wireless storage already, and can share that battery to charge up to 2 drained batteries. Talk about a mobile device’s best friend! I can’t say enough great things about how neat this little device is. If you have any traveling to do or have any travelers in the family, you cannot go wrong with picking one up.
The Kingston MobileLite Wireless G2 Media Reader is available at most electronic stores and of course, Amazon.
Full disclosure: I was provided a Wireless G2 to review after reaching out to Kingston.
