Other by stefan @ 2014-01-08
With the help of the Sky Share S10 Wi-Fi SD Card from Silicon Power we are able to transfer multimedia content via Wi-Fi to our computer or directly to portable devices, without the need of a middle man. The transfer rate on Wireless can be influenced by several factors and is recommended to place the camera as close as possible to the destination device in order to overcome interferences or low signal issues.
I would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their Sky Share S10 Wi-Fi SD Card for testing and reviewing.
“Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market to reach the worldwide market.
Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry.
Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.”
“Shoot and View” and “Instant Sharing”
Easy to use: no setup required
Exclusive and free APP (Sky Share SD) with user-friendly interface
Support iOS and Android APP
Support up to 5 people for photo sharing simultaneously
Class10 speed performance
Excellent design of Web UI
Card dimension: 32 x 24 x 2.1mm
Weight:2 g
Interface:IEEE802.11b/g/n
Operation temperature: 0° C ~ 60° C
Operation voltage: 2.8V~3.3V
Frequency:2.4GHz
Operating system: iOS and Android
Capacity:16GB, 32GB
Warranty:2 years warranty
The next breed of SD cards incorporate Wi-Fi capabilities so we won’t need to remove them each time from the current device and use a reader in order to copy data from them. One of the current offerings is the one from Silicon Power, which sports the Sky Share S10 code name. The product is shipped inside a small cardboard box, while the central part allows us to see the actual product along with the adapter:
On the back side of the packaging we will be able to see the product specifications, list of package contents but also a list of product highlights in multiple languages:
Both adapter and microSDHC card sit inside a transparent plastic mold. A Quick Guide is also available:
Inside the Guide we will find the necessary instructions to get the wireless function operational:
The adapter actually enables the Wi-Fi function and the card mounting hole is a little shifted to the left side:
On the bottom we have the golden contacts along with some serial numbers:
To the right there is one small lock switch:
The microSDHC card from Silicon Power has a 16GB capacity but can be also shipped with 32GB:
As with the adapter, the bottom side holds the contacts along with a product serial number:
Here is a photo of the card inserted into the adapter, ready for operation inside our camera:
The card comes formatted FAT32 by default:
In our HD Tune Pro Benchmark test, the resulting graph was pretty interesting, showing a transfer rate like a saw tooth:
The File Benchmark section shows a more regular graph, with speeds well between the limits of Class10 cards:
With the card inserted into our camera, a new hotspot will be created, named Sky Share S10, which features a default password:
While connected to this hotspot, we will be able to access the web GUI of the card. On the left side we have the menus like Home, Photo, Video, Others, Setup and System:
By navigating through the different categories we can browse the content:
Inside the Setup section, we will be able to change the default SSID and password for the WiFi interface:
The System tab shows the card capacity, used/free space, the WiFi MAC address along with the firmware version:
We have transferred a video file from the WiFi card to our laptop, but we have discovered that the transfer rate is not that great:
Of course, we have also performed read and write file tests with the card fitted into our laptop SD card reader:
The Wi-Fi SD cards seem to appear from more and more manufacturers now, in order to make accessible the inside contents from various other devices directly in just a snap. Thanks to this, we will be also able to share the contents on the many social networks like Facebook, Twitter and so on.
For both Android and iOS devices we have free applications available for browsing the content.
Regarding the transfer speeds we can say that we weren’t overly excited about the wireless performance since we could only access the data with speeds nearing 700KB/s; because of this we are forced to recommend a card like this in regular point-and-shoot devices with a lower number of megapixels. We must be also able to tinker with the power management setting of the SD card inside our device so the power would be always-on to the card, in order to have the newly created hotspot active most of the time when operating the camera; otherwise we will be seeing the SSID appearing and disappearing multiple times during the process and the data transfer would not complete successfully.
What we did really miss with this product would be the Internet pass-through function, which allows the card to connect to our current hotspot in order to also have Internet access while browsing the contents.
The Silicon Power Sky Share S10 16GB card is available online for about 43 Euros, which should be quite OK considering the added features.
We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!