SanDisk iXpand V2 USB Flash Drive
SanDisk iXpand V2 is the smaller brother of the original iXpand. It’s more compact and streamlined. It doesn’t have to be charged before I use it, which is great for portability.
iXpand is great for offline backing up and social media backup from Twitter and Facebook. Facebook backup works by downloading images you are tagged in. You can also stream via Chromecast or your Amazon Fire. There is also calendar backup and restore. I found when I am out walking and don’t have a great signal, I can save any videos and pictures to the iXpand instead of iCloud. But I did find that my battery drained a lot faster when using it.
The original iXpand was 1.4 x 0.5 x 2.5 inches and weighed 100g. The newer smaller version runs 2.3 x 0.66 x 0.5 inches and only weighs 5.5g. This again promotes the portability of this device and encourages people to carry this in their pocket for quick offline video, music or picture viewing.
SanDisk iXpand V2 Compatible formats include:
- Video formats: WMV, AVI, MKV, MP4, MOV, FLV, MPG, RMVB, M4V, TS.
- Music formats: MP3, AIF, WAV, AIFF, M4A, WMA, AAC, OGG, FLAC.
You will need to have the SanDisk/WD app installed to use the iXpand. This is where most of the functionality comes from. The app is a lot more stable than when I first used it.
I feel like Sandisk designed the iXpand for a non-cased iOS device. This isn’t something that would happen for me, especially when travelling. The connector doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room, so can be awkward when using the phone in portrait mode. One negative was the use of the exFat 32 formats. This increases compatibility, but only allows files under 4gb to be added. Which means my pirate copy of Theodore Rex won’t fit on it.
I would also love to see this work without the required app. So being able to copy from iCloud would be amazing, even acting as a second drive. Also, there is no support for AC3 or DTS. Which means any high-def videos I have encoded with these won’t work.
Bottom-line
The iXpand looks sleek and compact in the hand. Yet when trying to use in the real world I experienced problem after problem. I will continue to use this for offline backup, but the lack of support for some audio formats and the inability to add a file bigger than 4gb makes this not the entertainment saviour I thought it would be. Prices for the second generation SanDisk iXpand range from £28.05 for the 16GB version to £97.01 for the 256GB version. Finally, check out our other digital home reviews.
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