The Eye-Fi Mobile X2 is a wireless SD memory card that connects your Windows or Mac PC and select tablets to your SDHC compatible digital camera for upload of pictures and video.
Ease of Use, Performance: 21/25 Look & Feel: 20/25 Features 20/25 How much I enjoy 25/25 Total: 86/100
The Eye-Fi Mobile wireless memory card uses a very small Wi-Fi circuit to upload photos and video from your SDHC compatible digital camera or camcorder to your computer or tablet. I have purchased a prior version SD card from Eye-Fi to use in my daily work and finally received a newer version for reviewing with more features.
The Eye-Fi cards have a small Wi-Fi circuit inside them to connect to your computer or other Wi-Fi network using the common 802.11b/g/n wireless protocol. The Eye-Fi cards also act just like common SD memory cards when you do not have a wireless device setup with the card.
Out of the package the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 acts just like a high capacity memory card with 8 GB of capacity that about 4000 pictures or 3 hours of video can hold depending on quality and size. You can save a lot of pictures or video just like a regular high capacity SD card but the main feature of the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 is the Wi-Fi connection.
The card comes with a setup program loaded on it so with the included SD card adapter you simply connect the card to your PC and install the Eye-Fi center program. The Eye-Fi Center program will list all your Eye-Fi cards, all the photo files you have uploaded and settings for the card.
The card has settings for network access, passwords and any tablet or smartphone connections as well as the choices for uploading photos and video to the internet or email addresses. You can not only load photos to a computer but also to android or apple tablets and smartphones using an app as well as photos to sharing websites like Flickr or Facebook.
I finally got my app working on the Nextbook Next5 but not the way Eye-Fi wanted, I used a third party app called Fe-Fi from Mikolaj Habryn. This app worked quite well and I had no problems using my lower end tablet to upload photos both from my expensive Canon EOS XSi but also from a Nikon Coolpix L11 point and shoot digital camera.
Getting the Eye-Fi android app to work proved to be pointless as the tablet I was trying to get in onto did not have access to the Google Market. The app from Mikolaj Habryn worked very well and was easy to install from the APK download I used without having to go through any of the android markets.
Setting up the Eye-Fi for regular use between a digital camera and your choice of PC is very simple, just use the Eye-Fi Center to connect to your network and insert the password to connect to it. The card uses very simple settings to find your computer location and set up memory or a direct mode to upload photos to the iPhone, smartphone or tablet.
I usually have no problems using the Eye-Fi card between my Canon XSi for my product shots on a daily basis when taking shots and uploading them to my computer. I have been using both the Eye-Fi Home Wireless SD Card 2GB and the newer Mobile X2 card without many problems at all on a regular basis.
If a connection is dropped and later reestablishes it usually just picks up the upload where it left off, a few times I have had to restart the Eye-Fi Center to restart an upload. Most of the time Eye-Fi just loads pictures quietly from the small window that pops up letting you know it is uploading.
The cards Wi-Fi connection has good range and several times when taking shots outside of my house the card is already sending pictures inside to my network and PC. I have used it from 60 to 70 feet away in testing outdoors just to see range and it does work well up to about that depending on conditions.
If you use it indoors with walls in the way the range will vary as well as things like interference from other networks and devices like microwave ovens. The Eye-Fi cards are made for one main purpose connecting to a computer when you’re taking shots nearby so range is not that much of a concern.
As long as the computer or tablet is in a range of about fifty feet the little SD card should have no problem connecting and downloading the pictures or video to your device. One thing that this card can do that previous versions cannot is download photos to devices without a router or network setup.
The Eye-Fi Mobile X2 and other cards with Direct Mode can use its own Wi-Fi and download directly to a tablet or iPad, iPhone or smartphone directly. As long as you can get an application for the Eye-Fi working on your mobile device you should be able to use it to download your pictures and video without a network router.
The quality of the download is not an issue as the pictures will download all or nothing and video has the only problem of a lot of information passing between the devices. Eye-Fi cards do not compress the video or pictures so the files will not be altered but battery life is the only downside.
I do not have a problem taking product shots as I use two batteries in a battery pack but when checking out the Eye-Fi I did try it with a single pack. The battery drains faster when using a single battery and transferring images to my PC, video takes an even greater toll.
Video is not a big deal, the card transfers whatever is on the card but the video needs more time so you need to make sure you have fresher batteries when transferring video. If you have a camera with only a couple of batteries you may need to make sure you have plenty of replacements handy for transferring a lot of images.
Other than battery life and the occasional lapse of connection for whatever reason I have not had any problems with getting my pictures from my camera to my PC. Now that I have a program that connects my camera and tablet I can also use that for on the spot viewing of pictures on a screen that is at least a little larger than the cameras LCD.
On the Next3 tablet the pictures are about six inches from corner to corner while the LCD of my Canon EOS XSi has the picture size at about 2.5 inches. This more than doubles the picture size so when out in the field you can get a better look at your pictures using a tablet like my Next 3 or an iPad.
You can also use your smartphone or iPhone as well as an email enabled tablet to email pictures if you want to send them to others or for a particular job. I can easily see using a smartphone and camera on sites like home inspections and sending the resulting pictures to your office or even a client but using a better camera than your smartphone has.
That is the real benefit of an Eye-Fi card versus just using a smartphone camera, the image quality of a smartphone compared to a dedicated digital camera is not even close when you use cameras like a DSLR. The Eye-Fi card does a great job of connecting your camera with a tablet as well as using the card in a studio or office environment to connect to a computer.
I have found a new appreciation for the Eye-Fi both in my work and in general use with taking pictures, the Eye-Fi card continues to prove it’s a great product. The Eye-Fi mobile allows in the field transfer to a laptop or tablet as well as studio transfer to my PC easily.
I highly recommend the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 for use in transferring pictures and video to a PC, Tablet or smartphone and at a cost of about $75 it makes a good wireless device for a photographer.