The Kingston WiDrive:
Just a quick glimpse of the Wi-Drive once we took it out of the box. The Wi-Drive looks nice with the Kingston logo and the black mirror finish.
Above is what you will get in your package. You will have the wall charger and the cord to connect it to your wall charger and the computer if need be.
The power button is on the side of the Wi-Drive.
At the top of the Wi-Drive is the connection for your cord to charge or load your data.
We had a quick size comparison between the Seagate Satellite wireless drive and the Kingston Wi-Drive. As you can see the Wi-Drive is a lot smaller than the Seagate, but it does give up a lot of storage space to the Seagate.
Software:
Once you turn on the Wi-Drive, you will need to connect to the network. You can see the Wi-Drive unprotected lower on the list.
When you download the WiDrive App and open it you will be greeted with this screen. The WiDrive is available to click on to get to all your items you have stored on the WiDrive.
From the settings menu in the WiDrive App, you will have three options. The WiDrive settings will let you change the name of your device to anything you would like. You can also set the visibility, Channel, and security options in this screen. The WiDrive network connections button works as a bridge and will let you connect to a new network so you can also surf the web.
Usage:
The above are a few screen shots on different devices, they will give you an idea of the simplistic user interface that comes with it.
Above, we are streaming on our devices and checking to make sure the WiDrive does not lag and can handle 3 devices streaming all at once with our movie. We decided to watch Captain America and The Heavy, on all three devices at once. The WiDrive did a great job of keeping all the devices streaming without any problems.
We had two devices streaming Captain America and one streaming music without any lag what-so-ever. We also read in another review online that this device could not stream different movies at once, which we thought was ridiculous. We tested it out and found out that those reviewers were “full of it” and must not have tested it properly as we watched Captain American and Battle: Los Angeles at the same time. We were relieved to find out that we are right and the other site was wrong … we love it when that happens!
Then we tested streaming three movies on three devices to see if the WiDrive could handle it, which is could. We think we saw one little hiccup in the two plus hours of watching the three movies, but that is great news to us!
Battery Usage:
While doing our tests, we kept our eye on the battery usage for the WiDrive, We found that:
- Charging the battery from dead to 100% is not fully known as there are no light indicators that tell you when it is fully charged. So instead, we let it charge overnight to make sure it was fully charged for our testing.
- Battery from 100% to dead, while streaming the whole time, took a little under 4 hours.
To charge the Wi-Drive, simply connect it to any PC or Mac.
Speed Test:
Loading our WiDrive did take awhile since it is USB 2.0. We tested the speed of the drive and came up with just a little slower than USB 2.0 maxed speeds. Either way, the USB 2.0 connection is slow by todays standards and should be revamped into a USB 3.0 connection.
Conclusion:
The Kingston WiDrive wireless storage device was great to play with in our testing. It was easy to setup and easy to connect to all our devices. Streaming was fast to our devices and had very little load time once you selected your media to play or watch. Since it is wireless and only about 4 hours of battery life, there is no real reason to have massive 2 or 3TB drives. To get any good use out of those, you would need to be plugged into a power outlet and this would defeat the purpose of what Kingston is going for.
There are, however, a few things we should point out that you may not like. The GUI Kingston uses, is rather simplistic and not the greatest looking. It works and that is all the really matters, but if you like a pretty looking screen while using the WiDrive, it is not here yet. The WiDrive is USB 2.0, which is a little slow compared to todays standards with USB 3.0 becoming more prominent.
The WiDrive is a great thing to have around the house to connect to easily and watch movies or listen to music. It is even greater to have on long road trips where you can get about 2 full movies out of it before it needs to be charged. This gives you plenty of versatility to help keep your kids under control while all in the car, even if you are not on a long road trip.
With the MSRP of $90 it is at a pretty competitive pricing point. We would definitely recommend this to our friends if they liked to watch movies on trips or lying around the house or outside grilling.
The Kingston WiDrive receives the Techreaction.net Gold Silicon Award!
For more information on the WiDrive and other Kingston products, please visit their website.
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