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SanDisk’s Ixpand Wi-fi Charger Sync is a wi-fi charging pad with as much as 256 gigabytes of storage, meant for backing up your images, movies, and contacts — with some points.
For individuals who do not maintain their images and movies backed up into iCloud, SanDisk’s Ixpand Sync guarantees to offer a useful service— the flexibility to simply again up content material on their iPhone each time they cost it.
It is available in three capacities — 64, 128, or 256 gigabytes — which lets you unencumber among the area in your iPhone in case you’re not able to buy further iCloud storage.
The design
The Ixpand Sync has a large floor with a passable charging “candy spot.” We like the intense white coloration, a change of tempo from chargers which can be typically black or grey. After all, which means it’s going to be vulnerable to getting noticeably soiled, but it surely’s all the time good to see some selection on the market.
As a substitute of being a USB-powered gadget, this charger options an outlet plug, which was a bit shocking. Whereas this implies you will not want to seek out an adapter to your wall socket, it does imply that it’ll take up wall-socket area. That is mildly annoying in case you’d deliberate on utilizing the charger at the side of a dock.
The setup
As a result of there’s inside storage, there is a first rate quantity of setup you may must do. The Ixpand app walks you thru it, however the common gist is that you’re going to want to provide the charger permission to hook up with your house WiFi community and allow entry to all of the images in your iPhone. We did not have any points with the preliminary setup.
Wi-fi charging
So far as wi-fi chargers go, it is first rate. As acknowledged above, it is a vast charger, which implies you are extra more likely to hit the world that may cost your telephone versus one thing smaller.
It gives as much as 10W of charging energy, which implies you may get a good charging velocity. We sometimes desire to depart our iPhone on a wi-fi charging pad when not in use, so we all know we have all the time obtained juice once we want it.
Our solely criticism on the charging entrance is that it generally appears considerably inconsistent about charging by way of circumstances, even after they’re comparatively skinny.
We examined the Ixpand Sync with an iPhone 11 that’s housed in a Casetify Impression case. The Impression case has not prevented wi-fi charging prior to now with different chargers we have used, and we’d take into account it a skinny case. Sadly, there have been occasions when it appeared that it could journey the chargers overseas object detection and stop charging— but it surely wasn’t 100% of the time.
Eradicating the case and putting the telephone instantly on the charger alleviated this downside fully, however we’re not the sort to rock a unadorned telephone.
Backing up
Whereas we have been most excited for the backup function, we’ll be upfront — it wasn’t with out concern. Positive, it could again up photographs, movies, and contacts once we tossed it on the charger, and we thought that was nice. This implies which you could safely delete the recordsdata, supplying you with treasured area again.
Sadly, what wasn’t nice was the truth that often the images on the Ixpand would change into inaccessible from throughout the app, which lead us to erroneously consider that they have been corrupted.
Troubleshooting the issue wasn’t terribly enjoyable, both. We did all of the issues you need to do. We restarted the iPhone, first — which generally tends to repair about 80% of the odd, occasional app issues we have come throughout. It did not repair the Ixpand downside.
Subsequent, we reinstalled the app, which wasn’t probably the most enjoyable factor. Going again by way of the laborious job of establishing the charger a second time was unideal.
After substantial testing, we expect we might have found out why this occurs. The charger would not know what to do within the occasion that the telephone connects to the 5G channel fairly than the two.4 GHz channel on a router. So, in case your telephone connects to the 5G channel as an alternative, it will not again up your images, and for some cause, it appears to render the present photographs on the charger inaccessible from throughout the app, even in case you’re related through Bluetooth.
The repair is comparatively easy, simply join your telephone to the two.4 GHz channel. After all, this assumes that you just suppose to do it, as an alternative of panicking that you’ve got misplaced your images
Once more, it is not an entire deal-breaker, however one thing to bear in mind, particularly in case you’re giving it as a present to another person.
In the end, we discovered this to be fairly disappointing as a result of we love the thought. Backing up images on the finish of the day once you cost your telephone was one thing we obtained very enthusiastic about. We thought that this may be the right use case for folks and fewer tech-savvy of us who routinely run out of area for footage, but it surely might trigger frustration if it quits backing up images.
One other minor gripe is that the Ixpand nonetheless makes use of micro USB as an alternative of USB-C like most units have moved onto. This is not a giant deal if you’re solely going to retrieve the images again to your telephone, however in case you plan on transferring your photographs to your MacBook, this will likely require some adapters or specialised cords to maintain monitor of.
General
The Ixpand Sync is a superb idea, however we really feel it might be executed just a little higher. So long as you’ll be able to be certain that your iPhone will reliably connect with your 2.4 GHz wi-fi router channel and that your iPhone case is not too thick, it could slot into your life completely. Nevertheless, if you cannot, be ready for a little bit of frustration right here or there.
In case you’re fascinated about grabbing the Ixpand Sync for your self, you’ll be able to head over to Amazon, the place it begins at $99.99 for 64GB of storage.
Score: 3 out of 5
Execs
- Routinely backs up images and contacts to the charger
- Broad charging floor
- Appears to be like nice
Cons
- Will be fickle about charging by way of skinny circumstances
- Can create errors if telephone is related to totally different router channel than charger
- Makes use of outdated microUSB to extract photographs to laptop
Evaluation