ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 Review

Today we are looking at the new product from ADATA - the DashDrive Air AE400. The AE400 can interact with your PC and mobile devices to stream data from SD memory cards and USB storage media via wireless technology. It is also equipped with a power reserve which can charge mobile devices. This is not the first wireless enclosure to reach our offices. Kingston released the Wi-Drive, a high grade unit incorporating flash memory. We reviewed the Patriot Gauntlet Node Portable 2.5 inch device back in December 2012 and it proved popular with a wide audience. The ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 differentiates itself from the crowd by offering slightly different functionality. Firstly, while there is no storage onboard it can be used as a portable, wireless SD card reader, it can also stream files and media to multiple devices. For those people who travel regularly and may be concerned about their mobile phone battery failing, the DashDrive Air can also be used as a mobile charging platform with a hefty 5,000mAH battery onboard. Specifications: Ports: Micro-B USB (data transmission & battery charging), USB AF (host port for UFD/portable HDD or Power Bank function), SD card (for SD/SDHC/SDXC). Battery: Li-Polymer 5000mAh rechargeable battery. Power Bank: 5000 mAh. Temperature: Operating 0~50°C; Storage -20~60°C. File system compatibility: FAT32/exFAT. Operating System Compatibility: iOS 5.0+ / Android 2.3+ Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Mac OS X 10.x+ / Linux 2.4+. The ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 ships in a plain white box, indicative of traditional ADATA packaging we have seen in the last couple of years. There is a large image of the product on the front of the box. The rear of the box details product specifications. Inside is the unit itself, a micro USB to USB cable and a user manual. The ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 is an attractive design, encased inside a honeycomb style chassis. The power button can be seen in the image above left, as being comprised of three darker honeycomb shaped sections. The underside of the product is darker, but follows the same design principle. It is quite a heavy little product weighing 128g and measuring 80 x 59 x 12 mm (LxWxH). It may look as if it is constructed of aluminum, but it is plastic. One side of the DashDrive Air AE400 has ports for a micro USB connector (for charging) and a standard sized USB 2.0 port for connection to devices. It is worth pointing out that the AE400 doesn't need a power adapter to charge, it is all completely self contained inside the chassis. The other side of the unit has a standard SD port, perfect for pairing up with a camera (unless you are using a professional SLR and then it will more than likely be CompactFlash). Inside the unit is a wireless transmitter, although the only way to get a good glimpse of the internals would be to totally destroy the product, which we weren't willing to do. While it may be difficult to see on the images, there are a little row of lights along the middle of the unit. The power light will shift colours between green/orange/red depending on the life left in the battery. There is a green light which is related to activity and a blue light indicating wireless is transmitting. All fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Initially ADATA recommend that you charge the battery inside the DashDrive AE400 for eight hours. After turning on the AE400 it is worth checking the battery life. If the light is green, you have a 50-100% charge. If it is yellow then the charge is 25-50%. If red then you are down to the last 25% of battery life. The Power button toggles via three different modes. If you press it once for a long time it will switch to the default wireless-transfer mode. This allows you to transfer content on a USB drive across the device to the computer or tablet. If you press the button again then the wifi is switched off and the powerbank device charging feature will be activated. You will obviously need to connect the device via the USB port. This shows a limitation of the device, in that you can not charge a device and transfer wireless content at the same time via a connected drive on the USB port. The default password for the AE400 is '12345678'. Simply key this into your PC wireless security key panel. We only connected at 72.0Mbps to the AE400, normally in the same room connecting to my Netgear Wireless router we would get around 144.0Mbps. The official ADATA documentation does say that up to 150 Mbps is possible over wireless, but I never got anywhere close to that figure. This had the negative effect of degrading internet speeds, often by half. By this stage you will be able to see the device in your network section within the Windows Operating system. Initially there will be no internet access because you have obviously disconnected from the Wi-Fi network. Open a browser and key in 192.168.99.1 as shown above. The default log in to access the AE400 admin panel is 'admin' and 'admin'. The main interface panel gives access to various aspects of the AE400 functionality. The default setting is for Internet Access to be disabled. You can then enable Internet Access and then you will be asked to key in the network password. There are other settings in the admin panel, for updating the firmware, changing the admin password and to adjust the time. In operation we had no problem getting the DashDrive to transfer over jpg files from an SD card to our Windows 7 system, both wireless and when connected directly to the computer via the USB cable. We also hooked up a 1TB Western Digital USB 3.0 drive and it worked perfectly. The system only supports the FAT32 and exFAT format, so it is worth pointing out that if you have a NTFS drive you will need to reformat to a compatible file structure. ADATA say that the AE400 can support three mobile devices when handling 1080p content and five devices with 720p content. We tested this and the company claims are accurate. Streaming a 1080p AVI file to four connected computers did cause playback issues. We copied a 2GB MKV file from a connected SD card to a Windows 7 PC. It took 9 minutes and 12 minutes. Quite slow. When connected directly via a USB 3.0 port it took around 1 minute to complete the same task (58 seconds). ADATA offer free software for the iPad which can be downloaded directly from the Apple App Store (DashDrive Air Elite). This only takes a couple of seconds. Firstly you need to connect to the AE400 in the settings panel of the iPad. We are using the iPad 3 today. When we load the software, the iPad connects to the wireless enabled AE400. The interface is exceptionally easy to use with submenus listed on the left of the interface panel. Sadly you can't swipe across via multiple images, you need to directly access each file from the main interface menu. Steaming media f rom the AE400 was uneventful and just as smooth as the PC systems. We watched several 1080p Apple files natively and it was very smooth. We tested with two iPad systems and the AE400 was able to stream the same 1080p files to both. Sadly we didn't have three iPad tablets in the offices at the time of the review so we couldn't thoroughly test the ADATA claims. That said, if it could stream a 1080p movie file to three different Windows computers we don't see why it wouldn't work. The DashDrive Air Elite software is also available for the Android platform, so we wanted to test application stability on our Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. The application installed in a few seconds. The Android tablet had no problem connecting to the AE400 wireless signal either which was a good initial sign. The interface is almost identical to the iPad version, as we would expect. Getting access to the settings panel is achieved after keying in 'admin' and 'admin' into both user name and password panels of a prompt. Above, the Android configuration panel, identical to the PC version, available via a browser. Moving the same 2GB file across to both an iPad and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 took around 9 and a half minutes. Another ability of the ADATA DashDrive Air is the ability to charge mobile phones and other devices, on the move. There is a heavy duty 5,000 mAh battery inside the AE400. We drained the battery of the Nokia Lumia 920 until the device switched off. We charged the Lumia 920 via the AE400 to 90% charge. This left around 45% battery still in the AE400, so effectively you would get almost 2 full charges from the device before needing to recharge the 5000mAh battery inside the AE400. Streaming video from a SD card was impressive, the AE400 lasted around 11.5 hours before needing a recharge. There is no doubt that the ADATA DashDrive AIR AE400 is an immensely useful product which will prove invaluable to a portion of the audience reading the review. It would be ideal for presentations, in a room with multiple people - sharing video clips or pictures stored on an SD card or USB drive. Obviously as there is no built in storage when you buy it, the company assumes you are partnering the AE400 with some kind of compatible storage device. The build quality of the AE400 is excellent, and it looks much more expensive than it is. Only upon close inspection is it apparent that the main body is plastic for instance. In our review today we paired up the AE400 with multiple Windows PC systems, a third generation iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. In all cases we had a good experience, with the signal holding strong and the interface working well. My biggest concern with the unit is the drop in speed when using it as a Wifi passthrough device. On our network the speed dropped from 144Mbps to 72Mbps. This had a distinct and clearly negative impact on transferring large data files, both noticeable when benchmarking and in the 'real world'. I really would not want to be wirelessly copying large files from storage connected directly to the AE400. As a charging station the AE400 is particularly useful. It charged our Nokia Lumia 920 from flat to 90% charge almost as quick as it would from a mains plug. When we removed the Lumia 920 from the USB header there was still 45% charge left on the AE400 meaning we could get another charge before it died. In reality, without access to a plug, our Lumia 920 battery life would increase from 2 days to 6 days before we needed to 'return to base'. This is impressive in itself. You can buy the ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 directly from Overclockers UK for £59.95. Pros: Competitive pricing. looks very snazzy excellent charger for mobile phones useful for streaming to tablets and computers. Cons: Wifi bridge speed dropped from 144Mbps to 72 Mbps in our tests. Kitguru says: A very handy device which will prove useful to a wide audience. Would make an ideal birthday gift for a tech minded family member.

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ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 Review

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