ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 Wireless Storage Reader and Power Bank Review

When it comes to testing the DashDrive Air, there are two main sections I will break this part down into; battery life and wireless storage use.

Starting off with the battery life, the 5000mAh capacity is ideal for charging most modern smart phones twice over plus a little bit extra, but we do have to take into account that the battery is also used for the devices own operation. The USB port is able to output 1.5A of power which means that, whilst its not the fastest charger out there, especially when compared to a mains charger, its no slouch either and will swiftly charge a mobile phone. On the charging front, it is basically true that if you can charge it via USB, then this will work for you.

We do note that before using the pack for the first time, that you should charge it for a good eight hours before hand to fully condition and prolong the life of the battery. Following this, like any other new battery, its life may seem short to start, but it will get better after a couple of weeks of continuous use.

Moving over to the software, simply put it’s simple to use on there is nothing hard to get used to. The intuitive menu system quickly navigates through the connected devices folders and through to the content that is required. When connecting a storage medium to the DashDrive, we will point out that only one device at a time is supported and we did note that not all USB drives are supported either with a few USB3.0 flash drives not recognised. On the flip side though we did find that the AE400 works with all portable hard drives, including those with USB3.0 such as the HE720 that we looked at previously. As a bonus, the AE400 will act as an SD card reader when connected to any PC via USB.

Browsing photos, music and video files with the mobile app was very simple and playback was smooth with little fuss. We did find that within the iOS app, only mp4 videos are supported, even though iOS also supports .m4v and .mov and Android supports .mp4, .avi and .mkv

Getting connected to the internet was very simple, by enabling the Internet connectivity from the settings menu and selecting the required network. The AE400 will support up to ten devices connecting concurrently and sharing the wireless storage and shared internet connection.