Mobility Digest Review: Cute Android Robot Style USB 2.0 TF Card Reader

Gotta love that name up there huh?!  It’s from China so I guess it’s expected, and I’m guessing it’s not officially licensed either. Anyway, today for review I’ve got a very handy and very inexpensive accessory for you Android users out there (even though anyone can use it I don’t see an Apple fan using a card reader shaped like and Android for some reason…). The product is a tiny card reader shaped like the famous Android that will read and write your microSD cards on the go. It works, it’s inexpensive and it’s fast, what more could you ask for? Read on…

Author:  Kristofer Brozio

Vendor: Deal Extreme

Price: $1.50

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

 

Specs/Features:

Cute Android Robot Style USB 2.0 TF Card Reader – Green

This cute Android robot style USB 2.0 TF card reader is portable and can instantly convert your TF card into a USB flash drive. Via this card reader, you can transfer photos, music, and other media and data between your computer and your cell phone, digital camera, PDA, tablet PC, digital picture frame, or other digital device. This cute Android robot card reader is convenient to carry with the strap.

– Color: Green
– Cute Android robot design
– USB 2.0, transmission speed up to 480Mbps
– Support max. 16GB TF card
– Support hot swap
– Plug-and-play
– Portable strap design for easily carrying

Dimensions: 1.26 in x 1.06 in x 0.28 in (3.2 cm x 2.7 cm x 0.7 cm)
Weight: 0.14 oz (4 g)

 

What’s in the Box?

Technically there is no box.. it’s more of a bag, well no it is a bag.

The reader looks like an Android that we all know and love. It’s made of plastic of course and it comes with a cord to attached to your phone or key ring.

His head comes off to reveal the card slot and USB connection.

I should mentioned that the head does fit into the body tightly so you won’t have to worry about it coming apart. The way it’s made though, if it did happen to come apart you wouldn’t lose the actual reader or the card in it.

The card slot can be used with microSD cards, which is what most phones and tablets use these days for storage.

On the back you’ll find the USB connection:

To give you an idea of size here’s the Android reader with a microSD card and a quarter for scale:

So as you can see it’s small and portable.

It’s a cool little gadget for sure, I just wish the arms moved then it would be awesome!

 

Impressions / Review:

To use it you just slide the card into the slot and you’re ready to go.

For all of my transfers I normally use an all-in-one type card reader in my computer, it’s handy and I like it. 

I was curious as to how well this little Android performed so I put the microSD card into my reader and ran ATTO Disk Benchmark and then ran the same test with the microSD card in the Android reader.

So here’s the test results:

The little Android reader actually performed better than my in-bay reader. This is surprising to me really, both are on USB 2.0 and the reader is actually connected directly to a motherboard header while the Android reader was used with a USB extension cable. Hmm.. interesting.

 

Conclusion:

So a tiny Android for you to take on the go to help you read and write to your microSD cards. It’s not a bad little gadget especially if you consider it’s only $1.50!

I’m sure this would only appeal to Android fans, but I think most mobile users will find it very handy.

The only real complaint I could have the lack of any LED indicator to let you know it’s plugged in or there’s activity. It’s not that big of a deal, it’s just something I’m very accustomed to seeing on everything really.

 

 

Pros:
+Very fast
+Small and portable
+Seems well made
+Very inexpensive

 

Cons:
-No LED indicators