Belkin F8E461 Media Reader for iPod with Dock Connector

[Archived in Audio und Video, Belkin, Belkin Components, Computer Accessories, MP3 Players, Products, iPod, iPod Accessories]

Manufacturer: Belkin Components
Price at amazon.com: $80.04
This item is not stocked or has been discontinued.

Product Features:

• Saves thousands of digital images on your iPod
• Transfers files quickly and easily via FireWire® technology
• Indicates power and data transfer status of Media Reader with LED indicator
• Supports CompactFlash® (Type 1 and 2), SmartMedia™, Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick®, or MultiMediaCard (MMC)
• Stores cable away easily when not in use with onboard cable/connector storage

Product Description:

The innovative Belkin Media Reader for iPod lets you store more than tunes. It gives you a great way to back up digital images to your iPod, and take them with you on the road. Your iPod's abundant storage handles thousands of digital photos and frees up your camera's disk space so you can take more pictures. Simply connect the Belkin Media Reader to your iPod, and insert any of the six supported media types.

Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Not as bad as some reviewers say Rating:
Yes, it isn't very fast (about half or a third as fast as uploading to the computer in my experience) and it does tax the iPod battery, both negative qualities.... but its not as bad as some have said, and it definitely works as advertised.

To be honest though, I've only used it with 256MB cards, but I've used it for 6MP full size .jpgs (about 2.5MB) AND for RAW files (~6MB) from a Nikon D70 and it works equally fine for both. The RAW files obviously take longer, but there are less of them per card, so big deal.

Just as a rough estimation, I'd guess I could transfer somewhere between 1-2 gigs of photos before the iPod battery died.

Overall, if you are going somewhere that you can't bring your powerbook its a worthy investment. Its a lot cheaper than buying a couple gigabytes of flash memory (I only paid $82).

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Comment: It works... sort of. Rating:
I bought this product to store the RAW Canon Digital Rebel photos of my Australia trip. Instead of buying a set of expensive flash cards, I kept my 2 512 MB flash cards and copied the results at the end of the day.
The good:
In the end, it worked and saved me a lot of money, since I already owned an iPod.
The bad: where do I start?
- Copying 512 MB of data almost completely drains the iPod battery. Don't even think about copying more. It doesn't give you a good piece of mind to see the battery indicator go down quickly. Quickly, I decided to fill up the flashcard up to 75% capacity, to have some margin.
- It's EXTREMELY slow. 26 minutes for 512 MB. Not really an issue for me, since I never took more than 50 pictures/day, but other may find this a problem.
- Media Reader battery usage. A set of 4 AAA allowed me to copy roughly 10 512 MB copies. When the batteries run out, everything still seems to work fine until it stops after, say, 12 of the 50 pictures on the card. There's no indication at all about what happened.
- Software Robustness. From time to time, it wouldn't start copying or stop in the middle of a copying session. Restarting always solved the problem, but if this happened at the end, your iPod battery might already be drained by then.

Conclusion: it worked for me, but I can only recommend it if you are really really cash strapped, are a amateur who doesn't shoot that much and already own an iPod with some spare gigabyte. Otherwise you just don't bother.

Tom

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Comment: NOT quick Rating:
Read the advert carefully: "transfer the pictures quickly via FireWire technology". The Firewire port is used but the transfer is really at USB1 (or less) speeds. Since both the reader and iPod must run on batteries, the slow speed and rapid battery drain can become an issue--quickly. The 5-6 minute download for 128MB may be tolerable; the 20-25 minutes for 500MB probably isn't. Brian VanHarlingen, Sr. Technology Manager for Belkin acknowledges this slow speed (see Belkin FAQs or other review sites). Unfortunately, there are currently no alternatives for transferring from camera to iPod (w/o computer).

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)