One of the biggest gripes most people have had with the Eye-Fi cards is the limited storage space on offer, as to date the company has only offered 8GB cards at the most, something that has at last put off some people from investing in the standard. Now PQI has come up with a solution of its own that solves the storage problem permanently in the shape of the Air Card which is an expandable Wi-Fi SD card.The Air Card actually only holds the Wi-Fi part as well as a microSD card slot which allows microSD cards of up to 32GB in size to be used with the Air Card. Admittedly we're going to reach a point where 32GB is going to be considered not enough storage as well, but it's at least four times the amount of space of an Eye-Fi card.Admittedly PQI lacks some of the features on offer by Eye-Fi and PQI didn't reveal if its cards work with Eye-Fi compatible cameras, nor if it's using the Wireless LAN SD card standard. The press release only states that the card is compatible with most digital cameras that accept SD cards (we presume SDHC cards in this case though). The Air Card supports the 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi protocols and apparently the Wi-Fi is enabled as long as the camera is powered on.
PQI is providing a custom app called AirCard+ which should be available from Apple's iOS App Store and Google's Play market. Apparently the Air Card can share the files located on the microSD card with up to three devices simultaneously, although we're not sure as to why you'd want to do this, as it would slow down the Wi-Fi connection to a crawl. The company didn't announce any pricing for the Air Card, but it should be available as of right now from its resellers.We did spot a video on YouTube showing the software connecting to the Air Card and some pictures being copied onto an iPad, but the demo didn't exactly blow our mind, as the software UI looks clunky and unintuitive. The pictures do appear to be uploaded to the iPad fairly quickly though, which is at least something, but in terms of ease of use, Eye-Fi is miles ahead of PQI.
PQI launches the Air Card expandable Wi-Fi SD card
Reply With Quote
Posting Permissions
