Kingston MobileLite Wireless Reader & Charger Review

As far as wireless card readers go, Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless is solid built unit that does as it says in the tin (well, a box as the case may be). The design is simple and to the point, yet it’s not bland either – blending in well with most mobile devices on the market. Staying on the design front, the unit is lightweight and relatively compact meaning that its not going to be intrusive over all the other tech gadgets that we tend to carry around with ourselves these days.

Its refreshing to see an app that not only works with a fluid motion with no apparent bugs or required tweaks at this stage, although I’m sure there will be updates in the future to add more to the devices capabilities. Media playback is also pretty good and after playing with a number of different devices of this nature now from a number of vendors, it’s good to see something that just works.

Where this unit does let me down is its battery life. I would have expected to see more from the 1800mAh battery, especially when charging devices. I’ve seen battery packs of a similar capacity give considerably more charge to my phone when plugged in, so this does lead me to wonder how much power the unit itself actually requires considering it has to be turned on in order for the charging facility to work.

When it comes to pricing, there are two costs that have to be taken into consideration, the first and foremost of these being the cost of the unit itself. Priced at just under £50 (~€58 / ~$76 US) MobileLite Wireless is a little cheaper than other devices that offer the same features and with the capacity to which the MobileLite can offer left down to the end users own preference, with the scope for increasing it in the future, either with a larger SD card or USB connected storage; leaves the bare unit with a relatively good value.

Whilst I have been fairly impressed with the MobiltLite Wireless as a wireless storage device, the battery charging side of the unit has left me a little disappointed and this is an area that I feel that Kingston need to take a look at. If the battery had have given a much greater charge to a mobile phone – like some other similar devices are able to offer, then I feel that the Bang for Buck award would have been a fitting award to give but sadly at this moment the above is holding me back from doing so.

Bottom Line: The MobileLite Wireless is one great looking wireless storage device that also has one of the better accompanying apps that I have seen to date, however some improvements need to be made to the devices charging facilities to make this an award winning product.