Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless – Review

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless is the newest wireless storage solution for smartphones and tablets following the release of their successful Wi-Drive device. In contrast to the Wi-Drive, MobileLite does not include any internal storage and instead allows users to use multiple memory card types (SD/SDHC/SDXC and microSD) and/or any USB flash drive. MobileLite also serves an emergency battery pack for all of your USB devices. Kingston has added features to the MobileLite that help it surpass similar devices currently on the market.

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless is a device made to supplement your mobile devices in a lot of ways. MobileLite has the ability to stream to up to three different devices and act as a battery pack when those devices run low. First, let’s check out the packaging.

MobileLite

Included in the package for MobileLite is a charging cable, a manual, a MicroSD card adapter, and MobileLite Wireless. MobileLite weighs a mere 98g and is about the size of our iPhone 4s. MobileLite has a nice quality to it, but it doesn’t feel as elegant, or as complimentary to a nice smartphone, as the Wi-Drive did.

 

 

MobileLite features three ports: A microUSB charging port, a USB 2.0 port, and a SD card slot.
 

 

Featured on MobileLite’s side is a standard power button and three LED lights indicating: battery status, Wi-Fi status, and whether or not you have internet access.

Build Quality

 

MobileLite is functional and the simple gray and black build just works. The device itself has a plastic casing that feels durable. MobileLite should survive some fall damage if an accident were to occur, as it often does with mobile devices.

Unfortunately, MobileLite does not come with any internal storage – something that was very nice on our 128GB Wi-Drive.

Mobile device users might have to fork over some extra cash in order to get an SD card to use with the included adapter. An SD card’s “class” matters if you want to have the best writing performance. Kingston was nice enough to include a Class 10 32GB MicroSD card, included in their great Mobility Kit, with our review unit.

We tried a couple of USB drives and a Portable HDD without issue. The extra storage is a huge plus for anybody stuck with a non-expandable memory solution on their device.

So how was the streaming experience?

MobileLite Apps

 

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless allows you to stream movies, music, and photos to up to three different devices virtually lag free over its self-created network or over any Wi-Fi. For us, streaming was flawless and simple to control.

MobileLite’s complimentary app automatically attempts to sort different types of content from each connected storage device in app. The UI of the apps across platforms was easy to use and navigate.

In the past, Kingston’s Wi-Drive and subsequent apps suffered from minute long device resets with every network change. It’s something that might happen often as you move from one wireless access point to another. MobileLite’s app and networking is a much improved and solid effort from Kingston. Streaming, changing networks, having regular internet access at the same time, and moving files was dead simple.

The device requires three steps to stream and surf: connect to MobileLite’s customizable SSID, go into the MobileLite app settings and enter your network credentials, and reconnect to MobileLite.

 

 

Transferring files to and from the device in-app was fast enough to be tolerable. File transfers weren’t the speediest but they were acceptable at about 7/mbs on average.

In-app file transfers were a different story.

On our Android tablet and iPhone, we couldn’t select more than one file at a time to change/move, and other times we could select multiple files. This is an unfortunate app issue that can hopefully get worked out.

 

MobileLite as a Power Bank

MobileLite features a 1800mAh battery that on average lasted us about 6 hours with normal usage. MobileLite streaming to three devices while charging one of them shreds that time.

To put 1800mAh in perspective: an Asus TF300T has a 5950mAh battery, a Nexus 7 has a 4,325mAh battery, and an iPhone 4s has a 1,420mAh battery. You can barely squeeze by a full charge of an iPhone 4s and still have a little bit of juice left for streaming. However, for emergency use, the Power Bank feature is a nice extra.

 

Final Thoughts

I was recently at a concert and wanted to record video – but I was running low on memory due to all the podcasts on my phone taking up memory. I had to delete all of them in order to make room for more video. Situations like these call for more memory and at $43.99 (Amazon) , MobileLite is a great solution to limited storage issues.

With Kingston’s 32GB of storage featured in their Mobility Kit I was able to fit an entire personal music library and a few movies and photos on MobileLite.

Our only issue comes with file changes, such as moving them or deleting multiple files at once. The experience for MobileLite’s companion apps across different platforms was inconsistent and could use a bit more work.

Internet pass through works flawlessly and streaming to three devices was lag free. While MobileLite can fully charge an iPhone once, the power bank feature on the device was primarily used for emergencies and not something we tended to rely on.

Kingston’s MobileLite is a great device, but at $43.99 for MobileLite and $29.99 for a 32GB Mobility Kit, it seems expensive. Of course, keep in mind that this is the setup Kingston gave us and it is an ideal one. There are cheaper SD cards that may lower the total price for a MobileLite adopter. However, A 32GB Wi-Drive is about $90 and offers most of the features MobileLite does, excluding the power bank feature. MobileLite might ultimately be better suited for those that already own an SD card and are looking for a great way to expand their limited storage and need a power bank feature at half the price.