Advice needed on a wifi SD card

Hi folks,

If anyone has experience with these please share. I'm not really interested in getting one of these to transfer files wirelessly to my computer. I'm only interested in sending a low res jpg file to a tablet for clients to see what I'm shooting while they're standing in the room. I'll be using it with a 5D MK3.

I'm trying to decide on one of the wifi SD cards that are being sold;

So far I've found Eye-fi mobi, Eye-fi mobi pro, the Transcend Wifi and the EZ share 2nd gen cards.

They all seem to have mixed reviews. The EZ share being the least expensive and it has one feature I haven't seen mentioned on any other card, a Wifi hotspot. All of the rest of the cards seem to need a connection to a WIFI network in order to communicate between the camera and phone/app.

Does anyone have experience with these and for my application, to have immediate playback on a tablet, which one would be the best option?


Thanks in advance!

Howdy,

The 2 I have tried are the Eye-Fi Explorer x2 and another brand called FluCard Pro.
My 2 cents worth.
Eye-Fi is the more mature company in this field.

The Eye-fi Explorer x2 has a mode called direct mode (the mobis have this as well) which will push new photos to the computer/laptop/tablet​. It is rather slow so don't expect stuff to happen quick. However no internet connection is needed.
The downside is that I have found their support to be at best non-existent and at worst arrogant. They produce a product and basically you buy it and that is that.

The FluCard creates a hotspot and has a really cool mini website that you browse to. Up to 5 devices can connect to it although by then is has become really slow.
The support is also not that good although they did swap out a faulty card for me. One thing I have found though is that sometimes the computer either disconnects from the card or the hotspot stops. I have tried contacting their support but to no avail.

I have used both these cards in a Canon 50d with a CF adapter that I got off eBay as well as in a 5dMkIII.

I would say that probably the Eye-Fi is a better choice.

I've used the EyeFi Mobi with my 7d and an IPad. The Mobi is easy to set up and it works but it's slow and only works with Jpg not RAW. The result is I never use it.

My 6d and Fuji x100t both have built in WiFi which I only ever use for remote control. I never use it for file transfer. If you were doing a shoot with clients and shoot in JPEG + RAW I could see that it may be useful for picture review.

It's a while since I used it but I'm sure the EyeFi creates its own hotspot to use with the IPad app. I found it worked better if it wasn't competing with another wireless network.

Hope this helps.

I have the eyefi pro x2 from memory.

I use it with my 5d3 and Ipad and once setup in the direct mode it works quite well out in the field.
It will operate with its own wifi connection directly to the ipad, middle of no where no problem it still works.
Transfers around 1mb/sec. Small Jpegs come up fairly quickly on the Ipad, generally under 10sec after you take the pic.

I find the cards handy for the same reason you mentioned, plus with dual slots I can write RAW to the CF and jpeg to the eyefi in the SD slot.

Thanks for all the advice! I think the new eye-fi pro with its own hotspot is the one I'll try out.

I notice they no longer have the old X2 Pro models listed on their website. Only the Mobi and Mobi Pro. I have an old pro 16GB and a regular Mobi. I can only run the software for one on my mac. Same with the tablet. So the old Pro goes to the computer and the Mobi to the tablet since that interface is better. I ought to just bite the bullet and get a Mobi Pro so I can just have the same software and also have RAW transfers.

well I purchased the Eye Fi Mobi and for same type of reason. I want it on my phone for say facebook share or event sharing where high res pics will come later. I find that once connected it doesnt take long for pics to copy over. I truely like it and the only gripe I have is the way the photos show up in the eye fi app. My phone is dead so cant check but I believe it sorts photos by day oldest day down and newest top. ok that is good but the photos themselves are newest last in that day and oldest first. Seems backwards but it works... Just wish it did last pic first in app...

My experience is that my transcend wi-fi card drains the camera battery pretty quick on my T2I, haven't used it in the mark III so I can't comment on battery drain for this camera.

Just a quick update. I've been using my 32gb eyefi pro for a week or so and I'm pretty happy with it. Battery life is actually better than I thought it would be. It connects to my phone or tablet each time and starts transferring, no issues yet. The one thing I was hoping for is that it can connect to more than one android device at a time but it seems like it only likes to sync with one. Not a huge deal at all.

Overall I'm very happy with the eyefi. It's well worth the $100 or so.