The 4GB Eye-Fi Explore Video card uploads your photos and videos wirelessly from over 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. It automatically adds geographic location information so you can easily find and organize your memories.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A Great Product – if your expectations are correct!
Hi All,
I have been using EYE-FI cards for a long time and love the features that they offer. There is no easier way to take a picture/video and upload it to your computer from a wireless network (both in your home, office, or at wi-fi hotspots). They utilize Wayport Hotspot Access for outside of the home/office and Skyhook Wireless for Geotagging.
The cards have been offered, without video, in the 2gb model for a very long time and have been my personal favorites…however 2gb is just not enough sometimes…considering the umpteen numbers of mega-pixels these days. I was very excited when the 4gb came out and offered video to boot.
When I say expectations – as in the title of this review – you have to realize that this is a 3rd party tool that works in all Cameras that accept SD cards. That being said it does not have the ability to interface with your camera’s screen to give you updates as to what it is doing and when it is uploading. There is a bit of blind faith required to know that it is working….and worst case scenario is that if it didnt make the upload, the picture is still on the card and can be removed normally via the sd card adapter. Also, the fact that this card has wireless on it and does support geotagging is an awesome feature that will allow any camera to become gps aware…yes you need to be in an area that has some sort of wi-fi so that it can find where you are. Its not a true geo-tag feature.
Battery life will be an issue for most of the people that buy this card. Why? Simple answer is that it uses your camera battery to power the wi-fi portion of the card when it is uploading to your computer. If your camera is set to super duper high quality then yes, images will take a while to transfer to your computer, they even take a while when connected via usb. Wireless is slower then connecting your camera to your computer – so you must anticipate a delay factor and battery usage.
The video upload feature is also amazing but you must realize that video files are much larger then images and will also be slow to transfer via wireless to your computer…they will also put some extra load on your camera’s battery.
All that said, I believe that this card offers a unique feature set and for the extra cost is a viable method for shooting photos and video and getting them on your computer. Yes, you are paying a $80 premium for this functionality…but it is worth it if you are interested in the features that this card provides. Remember that it will also upload your photos to your favorite photo/video sharing site (flickr etc).
Eye-Fi has recently allowed the ability to maintain one account and multiple cards…so you are now able to have a number of cards linked to one account so that they all upload as per your settings.
Note: This card comes with one year of hotspot access included, however you can add the feature to any eye-fi card for $14.99 per year from their website.
5/5 in my opinion….please do comment and let me know if I can answer any questions.
3 Stars Works pretty well….
I got this card for two reasons, the geotagging and the ability to just turn your camera on and have all the pictures uploaded automatically.
The geotagging works when there are Wi-Fi signals nearby, as the card uses those signals and a database to identify where it is. This feature seems to work well with that limitation. My problem with the feature is that the geotagging only works though if you wirelessly upload the pictures. Which leads me to the second issue.
The wireless upload is exceptionally slow. You get no indication on your camera that the upload has started or if there are any problems. You can sign up for email, SMS or Twitter updates, but it would be nice to see this on the camera. The upload is very, very, very slow. I had 100 pictures and it took over 2 hours. My camera batteries depleted themselves twice during this process.
It would be much better if you could still use the included SD/USB adapter to upload your pictures and retain the geotagging information.
With a 4GB SD card only costing $15-20 these days, you are paying at least an $80 premium for the wireless uploading and geotagging. I wish those both worked a little better.
