Kingston MobileLite Wireless G3 & Pro - Testing the MobileLite

Testing:

With all of that out of the way, we finally come to the testing part of the review. As simple as this product is, there is actually a ton of different things to check out and test. We'll go through some of them quite quickly and spend a bit more time on others. We'll start with the battery feature. The Kingston MobileLite claims to charge 2x as fast as your "regular" charger. In my experience, it's not all that fast. My wall charger for my Nexus 5 is faster than the G3 and my car charger is even faster than my wall charger. While the MobileLite isn't exactly slow, it takes longer than the two hours my wall charger takes - and my car charger (standard HTC charger from the original Nexus One) charges in just over one hour. 

It does charge faster than a standard USB port on my PC though. As for battery capacity, it seems to be a little lacking as I couldn't charge my phone twice on a single charge of the MobileLite G3. The Pro version has a slightly larger battery and I was able to get two full charges out of it. You know you're almost out of battery when the LED indicator flashes red. When it's charging, it flashes green, and when it's full - the LED turns to solid green.

To start the MobileLite, hold the power button for three seconds and a blue light will appear. Once it's done powering up, a Wi-Fi LED will appear and you can connect to it wirelessly. If you have the Ethernet (WAN) plugged into the device, the Wi-Fi will have internet access as well. At this point, you can connect to the Wi-Fi with any enabled device, but if you want access to files on your mobile device, you'll have to fire up the App.

Software Tour:

The main screen of the MobileLite App has options to connect to the files on the MobileLite G3 or Pro as well as options to backup or restore your mobile device's camera roll, contacts or calendar. It is super handy and quick to perform device backups and is something that people should probably do more often.

When it comes to viewing files on the MobileLite Pro, you will have several different locations to choose from. The options on the Pro include USB, SD and MLW Pro. The MobileLite G3 only has the options for USB and SD as it doesn't contain any local storage itself. You can also view your device's camera roll or view files offline (local files on your mobile device). The file explorer on the MobileLite is not as simple to use as other software, but it does allow you to copy, move and delete files from the MobileLite wirelessly. 

At the bottom of the main screen are options that include Home, Music, Video, Backup and Settings. We've covered the basics, but there are a couple of settings that are interesting. You can change the SSIDs and Wireless password of the MobileLite as well as specify what gets backed up and where it gets stored on the device. You can choose to restore different backups - or delete all but the latest one. There is also an option here to completely format the MLW and restore things to factory defaults.

As for the wireless aspect of file storage, management and internet routing, the MLW works exactly as advertised. As I mentioned before, the file explorer is a little clunky, but it does offer basic functionality. The wireless signal is strong and the features are great overall.

As for streaming media, I was very impressed with the Kingston MLW. At one point, I connected four devices to it wireless and streamed HD content to all four at once without any visually dropped frames, stuttering or laggy playback. As for bandwidth and power - it works great.

The downside to streaming media, is that the app not only manages your files - but it also acts as the media player as well and the file format support is a bit more lean than other devices. This can be circumvented by downloading the file you want to use and playing it with the media player of your choice - but it is slower, and takes more space on your phone. Hopefully, future firmware updates will offer broader file format support for media playback.

Conclusion:

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless G3 and Pro do everything that Kingston claims they will do, but some of it isn't quite as good as we'd hoped. The MLW itself charges pretty slow and it certainly didn't charge any of our devices twice as quickly as any other charger we've used. Also, the App can be a bit fussy at times and it has failed more than once to connect to the MLW. Once I changed my Wi-Fi SSID, it connected alright, but this is an extra step that shouldn't be required.

On the positive side of things, it's super handy to be able to have three different storage options in the MLW Pro. It becomes a very cheap way to expand your phone's storage - all while being able to easily and seamlessly share files with other devices over a local Wi-Fi network - and at the same time, staying connected to the internet via the integrated router.

I do plan on taking the MLW Pro with me every time I travel as it puts 192GB at my disposal. The product has a lot of great features - and a couple that need a bit more polish. Either way, it's pretty solid and earns a 7/10 in my book.

If you have any questions, comments or general feedback regarding this review, please feel free to post in the forum right here.