The Nexus 7 tablet is an awesome device. With its Full HD 1920 x 1200 display, always up to date Android OS, fast Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with blazing GPU and stereo speakers, there's only a few areas where we see complaints and most of those tend to be about the lack of expandable memory. Let's face it, while there's been lots of debate about the reasons for Google to not include a MicroSD slot on their Nexus devices, there's no denying it would be nice to have at times. The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive solves this problem by providing an easy, portable expandable memory solution in a tiny wifi enabled drive that you can carry with you in your bag, pocket or case and that provides a ton of extra memory for your Nexus 7 or any other wifi enabled device to connect to wirelessly.
Here's how it works: The Wireless Media Drive has its own wifi networking chip so it creates a wifi network that you and up to 7 other mobile devices can all connect to simultaneously. You can load pictures, documents, even stream movies from it and it has an 8 hour battery life per charge. As the video below shows you can not only take your favorite catalog of movies or documents along but you can expand the memory by putting up to a 128GB SDcard in giving you a total of 192GB of memory. That's the equivalent of 6 entire 32GB Nexus 7s in one tiny wifi streaming device.
While the video above shows the Wireless Media Drive being used with a different tablet, it works just as well with your Nexus 7
Now this isn't the first wifi portable battery powered drive we've seen, but it and its little brother, the SanDisk Connect Flash Drive are some of the smallest we've seen. One trick the Wireless Media Drive can do that most others can't is that it accepts SD and MicroSd cards that can be plugged right in, say from a camera or other device and let you access your content on the go over the wifi network. The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive shown in the video above comes in 32GB or 64GB versions and there's also a smaller SanDisk Connect Flash Drive shown in the picture above that comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB for a little less cash . One thing to note is that the flashdrive only has about a 4 hour battery life compared to the big brother's 8 hour and can only take MicroSD cards where its big brother can take full size SD as well. The 64GB version of the SanDisk Connect Wirelss Media Drive can be found for $99 at Amazon at the link below with the 32GB costing as low as $79.99. The SanDisk Connect Flashdrive is a little less with the 32GB version coming at $59.99 and a 64GB version at the same $99.
Both give you about a 150ft radius wifi network that multiple devices can connect to simultaneously but of course throughput is affected with multiple devices. Our pick would be the 64GB version of the Wireless Media Drive. While a tiny bit larger than the flashdrive, the additional 4 hours of battery life plus ability to take SD cards on the fly make it worth it. Definitely a cool accessory for those that like to take collections of media on vacation or on the road with their Nexus 7. We've linked to several of the options on Amazon below.
