Best List: Xtra Drive by Naztech
We’ve all been using flash drives on our Macs for ages, ever since Apple dropped the disk drives from its computer lineup.
iPhones and iPads don’t have a USB port, so it’s hard to use the same external thumb drives on the go.
The new Xtra Drive from Naztech is the best of both worlds, providing a single microSD card-based solution that has both a USB and a Lightning connector that will let me back up and transfer files from my iOS device to any computer.
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The fact that I can put any microSD card into the Xtra Drive, up to 128GB, is pretty amazing. My iPhone rarely runs out of room at 64GB, but I know plenty of people who try to manage 16GB iOS devices: they’re always moving photos, apps, music and video to the cloud and back in some sort of rotating-file hell. With a 128GB card in the Xtra Drive, they’d have enough storage for 36,000 songs, 56 hours of video or 64,000 photos. That’s a lot!
Better yet, I’ll never run out of storage; I can just go buy another microSD card and drop it in. Heck, this iOS flash drive even comes with a 16GB SD card, so I can use the Xtra Drive right out of the box.
The coolest feature of the Xtra Drive, beyond the utter ease of storage, is the way I can just pull files from my iOS device (using the free to download app) and then slide the physical switch on the flash drive. This pops out the USB connector and I’m immediately able to slide it into a USB port on my Mac, grabbing files for my computer fast and easy (it uses USB 3.0 for speed). It’s way better than connecting a Lightning cable, launching iTunes, and then figuring out which app to sync my documents or photos with.
The app that allows the Xtra Drive to work on iOS is fairly intuitive, with an easy Contacts backup section, the ability to use my iPhone’s free space like extra storage, and a simple Photo backup system that just works. There’s even a way to create text files on the Xtra Drive, which are super-easy to move to the Mac when I want to.
Why you need an iOS flash drive
With smaller-capacity iPhones and iPads, a device like this iOS flash drive is going to be essential for backup or external storage. Being able to transfer photos and videos from my iPhone to my Mac in short order is a welcome addition.
I’ve got the Naztech Xtra Drive ensconced in my backpack pocket at all times now, and use it to move PDFs, videos and images from my Mac to my iPhone with out any trouble. With this iOS-friendly, dual-purpose device always ready, I never have to worry about getting my data from iOS to OS X or back again.
Naztech provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. Learn about more lust-worthy products.
