If you’re anything like ourselves here at Custom PC, you probably carry a fair few gadgets around with you, from USB flash drives to portable batteries to charge your smartphone on the move. However, NAS enclosure manufacturer QNAP has come up with the QGenie, which it says will combine all these features and more in one device.
In addition to having its own internal 30GB of speedy flash storage, the QGenie also has a built-in 3,000mAh battery. This battery powers the device itself, but it can also be used to charge your smartphone or tablet. This capacity is enough to charge most modern smartphones from flat to full, and again to around 50 per cent.
However, it’s the QGenie’s built-in Wi-Fi access point that makes it really interesting. If you’re using a hotel Ethernet port or router, for example, you can use the QGenie to share an Internet connection wirelessly to numerous devices. Likewise, you can also use it to broadcast a tethered smartphone’s Internet connection, or even connect a data dongle to its USB 3 port and share the connection to several devices.
QNAP has also tapped into the power of Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS devices, allowing you to connect to the QGenie to upload from these devices to download or share files and media. If you’re running out of space for photos on your smartphone, you can upload a wad of them to the QGenie manually or automatically.
For those long train or car journeys, you can upload videos to the QGenie to stream them to your tablet or smartphone, instead of storing them locally.
The side section also sports an SD card slot, which you can use to expand the QGenie’s internal storage. What’s more, you could also plug your camera’s SD card into this slot to dump all your photos onto its internal flash drive – handy if you’re snap-happy and regularly run out of space. The internal storage isn’t SSD-fast but we measured sequential read and write speeds of 113MB/sec and 61MB/sec respectively using CrystalDiskMark. Connected to an 80Mb/sec (download) and 20Mb/sec (upload) Internet connection through the QGenie, an iPhone 6 managed to download at 35Mb/sec and max out the upload speed, so it has enough headroom to cope with several devices streaming files at once too.
To access the QGenie and configure its various features, you can either use a browser if it’s on your network, or use the Android or iOS Qfile apps. It isn’t the most user-friendly device to get working, but once you’re used to it, moving files and folders around is fairly painless. Thankfully, as it has its own Wi-Fi access point and internal battery, you can connect your smartphone to it wirelessly wherever you are.
The QGenie can be a little tricky to set up and use at first, but £70 for a portable substantial battery back, Wi-Fi access point, NAS and 30GB of storage isn’t a bad deal at all, and it’s a very handy gadget to carry around. It’s a shame the internal storage isn’t bigger, though, as the 30GB capacity limits its use out of the box; however, it’s also expandable, and it’s still a handy gizmo even with just 30GB on offer. ANTONY LEATHER
SPECIFICATIONS
Storage capacity 30GB
Ports 100Mb/sec Ethernet, USB 3 (A) USB 3 (micro B), SD card
Wi-Fi 802.11n 150Mb/sec
Battery capacity 3,000mAh
Supported operating systems Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Linux