It started when, at a hacker conference, I met someone who had turned his backpack into a mobile file server. Inside was a router with custom firmware and a regular USB flash drive plugged into its port. The router ran off a large battery and shared files over Wi‑Fi. Anyone could connect to an open wireless network with an intriguing name, browse the stored files (mostly programming and security books), or upload their own. When I learned that essentially the same thing now exists in a thumb‑drive form factor, I wanted to test it.
Use Cases
Why would you even need a Wi‑Fi flash drive? Forget the marketing gimmicks and think about what’s actually useful. From a security standpoint, the key benefit is being able to work with any data without storing it locally. Your work phone or laptop won’t have anything on it that can be used against you. Even if your device falls into the wrong hands, the incriminating material stays on the drive.
In essence, it’s a personal cloud you can carry around. Remember the immortal line, “I pull it from my wide trousers…”? Well, you don’t even have to pull this flash drive out. You can toss it in a backpack or stash it somewhere in the office, use it yourself, or send others sanitized content without ever handing over the storage device itself.
Another use case is when you’re short on storage on mobile devices. Some smartphones don’t have a memory card slot. You can plug in a flash drive via the micro-USB port if needed, but it’s not very convenient, and USB OTG support may be missing. The SanDisk Connect isn’t a silver bullet given its short battery life (up to four and a half hours), but it does let you offload gigabytes of files that you don’t need to access frequently.
If you don’t have a router, you can use the wireless flash drive to connect devices over Wi‑Fi. Just have them join the same network named like SanDisk , and they’ll be able to share files wirelessly. This is especially handy at offsite events where you need to quickly share data with lots of people.
External Inspection
The SanDisk Connect wireless flash drive comes in capacities from 16 to 256 GB. For testing, we bought the 32 GB model. Higher-capacity versions ship formatted not with FAT32 but with the proprietary exFAT file system, which isn’t supported by many devices. Changing the partitioning or reformatting would have affected our results. The entry-level model might also be limited in other ways, so we decided not to risk it.
Of the 29.6 GB available to the user, 0.04 GB is taken up by manufacturer‑preloaded content: sample photos, music files, and a single video clip.
Dispatches from the Morgue
We did a teardown of the USB flash drive with an actual scalpel and evaluated its build quality and repairability.
It’s a typical two-piece plastic enclosure held together by internal clips. Start from the connector side: first slide the plastic bezel around it. Insert a scalpel into the gap near the exposed corner and gently pry to separate the halves. Slip a small piece of thin plastic (for example, a strip cut from an old bank card) into the opening, then work the scalpel a little farther along the edge. Repeat until the last clip releases.
Right after cracking it open, there’s nothing interesting to see. Everything is covered with foil that doubles as an RF shield and heat spreader. The only opening is for the LED indicator, and near the connector you can just make out the power button’s stem.
On the back of the PCB, the built-in battery is hard to miss. Who was saying its capacity is unknown and the manufacturer won’t disclose it? Here’s the open secret: 380 mAh at a nominal 3.7 V gives you 1.4 Wh and change. That’s exactly what’s printed on the cell from Hangzhou Future Power Technology. The battery measures 52 × 16 mm, so finding a replacement by these specs should be straightforward.
The battery itself is secured with a strip of double-sided adhesive tape. Underneath it, the underside of the PCB is visible, and the charge-control circuitry shows through the semi-transparent film.
On the front side of the board, the foil is glued down very firmly. There’s a real risk of tearing it, so be especially careful at this stage. Peel the foil back and… with a simple motion, the flash drive turns into a card reader!
The manufacturer didn’t bother soldering a NAND flash chip. Instead, SanDisk simply used a microSDHC memory card of its own. For what it’s worth, the card is quite decent—Class 10 or UHS Speed Class 1 (U1). You might not want to swap it out immediately, but it’s doable: just bend up the metal plate and the card will pop up on its spring contacts.
A Tight Power Budget
The SanDisk Connect flash drive won’t work reliably in every USB port. The manufacturer recommends plugging it into the rear ports that are soldered directly to the motherboard. Front-panel ports are wired to the board, and those cables add resistance, which can lead to voltage drop and insufficient power.
Because the SanDisk Connect powers both the controller and the built‑in battery’s charging circuit from the USB port at the same time, it’s pretty demanding on the power supply. In my measurements it averages about 170 mA during writes. However, the charger briefly draws up to 380 mA, and the controller needs roughly another 100 mA on top of that. That just barely fits within the USB 2.0 current limit of 500 mA.
In standalone mode, the SanDisk Connect can run for up to four and a half hours. That assumes a full charge and the host device about half a meter away, casually browsing photos. Under heavier use, continuous runtime drops to roughly three hours.
You’re probably thinking you can power the flash drive from a power bank and run it around the clock. Not so fast. When it’s plugged into a USB port, it charges (about two hours), and all wireless features are disabled during that time.
USB Speed Test
Don’t let the colored connector fool you. The SanDisk Connect only supports USB 2.0, with all the attendant speed limitations. Worse yet, it’s slower than many older flash drives.
AS SSD Benchmark reports sequential read speeds under 13 MB/s. Writes don’t even reach 8.5 MB/s, despite the fast card inside. The same memory card in an external TS-RDP8K USB 2.0 reader delivered read speeds over 25 MB/s and write speeds above 12 MB/s.
In a new USB 3.0 card reader, the card reached 60 MB/s or more when reading (the manufacturer even claims “up to 80 Mb/s”), while maintaining a similar write speed. In short, in the SanDisk Connect the fast card is bottlenecked by the old interface and a slow controller. HD Tune Pro I/O benchmarks confirm this.
File-operation tests look better than synthetic benchmarks, since the latter have caching disabled. Total Commander reported that writing photos to the flash drive ran at 10–11 MB/s.
The movie doesn’t start copying right away—it spends a few seconds caching—and the progress bar shows a fluctuating speed between 6 and 12 MB/s. That’s due to a mix of factors: caching a large file, the initial condition of individual memory cells, heat buildup during operation, and more. As a result, the speed rises and falls. On average, it’s a little over 7 MB/s.
It’s generally assumed that data is read from a flash drive more often than it’s written to it. The maximum measured read speed over USB was 12 MB/s. Honestly, I haven’t seen speeds that low in many years.
In everyday use, the flash drive proved rather slow. It’d be interesting if it could surprise us with higher speeds over Wi‑Fi. Let’s find out.
Connecting over Wi‑Fi
Connecting to the wireless flash drive is straightforward. Power it on, wait about fifteen seconds, and scan for an SSID like SanDisk , where the asterisks are the device’s unique six-character code. Once you join that network, you’ll be connected to the drive.
You can view the contents of the SanDisk Connect and manage its settings from any device via a browser at www. (which maps to IP 172.). Make sure there are no active connections to the internet or other networks, and set your Wi‑Fi adapter to obtain an IP address automatically (this is usually the default).
On mobile devices, it’s more convenient to use the official Connect Drive app. There are versions for Android and for iOS.
The app shows the flash drive’s remaining battery level, lets you configure backups of photos, videos, and contacts, and can stream video to multiple devices at once. Those devices share the available bandwidth, so the number that can be connected simultaneously depends on the video bitrate and connection quality.
To start a group viewing from the wireless flash drive, just pick any movie on it and hit play. When streaming 1280×720 video at an average bitrate, you can connect three to four devices. If you connect more, the video will start lagging for everyone.
As usual, the wireless network is open by default. Security settings are configured later through the app or the web interface.
Internet or LAN?
There are two ways to connect to the SanDisk Connect wirelessly via the companion app: “drive-only” mode or “drive + internet” mode. In the first case, the drive runs at maximum speed (which is especially important for video playback). In the second, it shares bandwidth with your internet connection, which comes at the cost of performance.
Since smartphones and tablets have a SIM card slot, it’s more convenient (though more expensive) to use Wi‑Fi in “storage‑only” mode.
Testing the Wi‑Fi connection
Wireless connectivity in the SanDisk Connect is handled by an IEEE 802.11b/g/n controller, the Marvell 88MW302. It’s an ARM Cortex-M4F clocked at 200 MHz with 512 KB of RAM.
The USB adapter operates in the 2412–2462 MHz band, automatically selecting the least noisy channel. Its transmitter power is 8.5–9.3 mW, which corresponds to 9.3–9.7 dBm. Not bad at all for such a tiny device with a built‑in antenna!
If your phone is just a meter or two from the flash drive, its wireless network signal is actually stronger than the router in the same room.
Copying a file to the flash drive over Wi‑Fi from a Nexus 5 smartphone about half a meter away yielded 2.8–3.3 MB/s. As the distance increased, the speed dropped predictably, but the connection remained stable.
At a distance of eight meters with a closed interior door in between, throughput dropped below 1 MB/s, but the file copy continued.
Backup, video streaming, and all other operations with the flash drive also run at up to 3.3 MB/s when connected in mass‑storage–only mode.
Chinese Clones
SanDisk Connect debuted in the fall of 2015. Since then, Chinese vendors have managed to clone it—a Wi‑Fi flash drive. The basic concept is the same, but they fall short of SanDisk’s product in terms of features. Many don’t have a mobile app at all, and when they do, it’s often just for show and barely usable. That said, among the clones you can find models with a USB 3.0 interface and a higher-capacity battery.
Conclusions
SanDisk Connect isn’t as versatile as a full-fledged router with an attached storage drive. Without installing custom firmware, you won’t be able to spin up your own servers on the stick or hook it into multiple networks at once. The upside is that it works out of the box and is a truly standalone, pocket-sized device. You can use it as personal or shared storage for any Wi‑Fi–enabled devices, stream a movie to three gadgets simultaneously, automatically back up photos, and, frankly, just catch the eye of fellow geeks.
Unfortunately, the SanDisk Connect has plenty of downsides, too. Its real-world usefulness is hampered by short battery life, slow read/write speeds no matter how you connect, and the inability to power the drive from an external source while keeping the wireless link active during charging. It feels like SanDisk is just testing the waters to see how consumers respond to this new direction.