The Macally WIFISD2 is a compact little travel gadget that offers a lot of useful features in a tiny box.
In the box you get the WIFISD2, a small manual and a USB cable. You’ll need to provide the storage in the form of an SD card, USB stick or a USB drive. Micro SD cards can be used providing you have an SD card adapter.
Pop the files you want to take around onto your chosen media and you’re good to go. The WIFISD2 is a tiny little gadget that’s easy to slip into a pocket or bag and is perfect for travelling.
Power the WIFISD2 on and it generates it’s own WiFi network. Connect to this with your mobile or tablet and, via a free app, you’ve got access to your files. Following the instructions 3 folders (for music, photos and music) were created and files dropped in, but the app didn’t seem to recognise that files were in the folders.
As you can see in the review video there are large buttons for all the different media types and despite there being files in the folders when you click the buttons nothing showed up. This wasn’t a killer issue as there is a file explorer allowing access to the files that way.
The idea is that this little box holds the files and then streams them to your device, with multiple devices able to connect and stream at the same time. This seemed a little hit and miss, some files would stream fine with no problem, but sometimes things went a little wrong, for example sometimes there would be audio only with the video stuck on a single frame. When it works it’s brilliant and you can have multiple devices streaming content at the same time, but when it doesn’t work properly it can be very frustrating.
However, streaming files isn’t the only feature of this little box of tricks. It can also act as a backup for your devices, it can connect to your Dropbox account (very handy if you want to expand your storage beyond a memory card) and act as a portable WiFi hotspot.
The Macally WIFISD2 can be connected to an internet connection either via WiFi or Ethernet and it passes the internet connection on to whatever device is connected, meaning you can be connected to the WIFISD2 and still have internet access.
This last feature is perhaps one of the most useful in a travel situation. Lots of hotels still offer great wired internet access and poor WiFi access unless you pay for an upgraded service. In this situation you could plug the Macally WIFISD2 into the Ethernet connection and then create your own local WiFi hotspot for your devices to use rather than try and make use of the hotel WiFi.
The Macally WIFISD2 packs a lot of smart features in and is, generally, a good traveling companion, especially if staying somewhere offering Ethernet only internet access.
Available from Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/1XKZKRX and Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/1Q9VGFP
