RAVPOWER All-IN-1 FILEHUB REVIEW | Mac Sources 8.9
Enjoy a portable Wireless Router, share media wirelessly, and keep your phone charged with the included 6700mAh External Battery, without breaking the bank.
Let’s be honest, nobody likes to be sick. Even worse, nobody wants to be sick enough to go to the Emergency Room on their one day off for the week. This past weekend, my mother flew into town for my son’s birthday. She arrived sick, experiencing ten days of upper respiratory symptoms, and continued to worsen. We ended up in the emergency room on Sunday afternoon and spent several hours waiting in the lobby and in the room. During that time, we turned to the RAVPOWER ALL-IN-1 FILEHUB and a Toshiba 1TB portable hard drive for some much-needed attention diversion. Sometimes, just like in this instance, a product title does not adequately describe how the product should be used, could be used, nor the potential benefits of the device. I do not think that I appreciated the scope of this device until I used it to charge my mothers phone and used it to stream a movie to her iPhone 8 plus.
The RAVPOWER All-IN-1 FILEHUB arrived in a 3 1/2 inches wide by 5 3/8 inches tall by 1 1/2 inches thick retail package. Starting with the slipcover, I was pleased with the method that the company presented the product. The RAVPOWER name was clearly visible along the top left of the cover, followed by the green “ALL-IN-1 FILEHUB” name starkly contrasting against the white background. Beneath the title, RAVPOWER provided three bullet points detailing the main features of the device: Wireless Router, Wireless Media Sharing, 6700mAh external battery. More than 50% of the cover was dedicated to the three by three inch images of the black/white model RP-WD03 FILEHUB. Lastly, the company added a product SKU sticker along the bottom right. The right side panel provided the www.ravpower.com web address, while the left side essentially restated the cover details. Located along the bottom right of the left panel, I found two small boxes with “black” and “white” options. My device had a black check mark next to the black color choice. The rear panel provided the company name/model along the top, a 1 inch tall by 3 inch wide image of the top/bottom of the device, and three bullet points detailing the 6700mAh/24.12Wh capacity, DC 5V/1A input/output. Beneath this section, the company provided a list of support web addresses (US, CA, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT) a QR code, several of the traditional product manufacturing labels, and website/phone number/address data. Each of the top/bottom cardboard panels displayed “RAVPOWER” in black font.
To access the FILEHUB, slide the inner brown cardboard box out of the outer slipcover. Within the box, you will find a 48-panel, multi-lingual instruction manual, a 3 3/4 inches long by 2 1/8 inches wide by 1 inch thick FILEHUB, and a flat 25 1/2 inches long USB-A to USB-micro charging cable. The matte black RAVPOWER FILEHUB had an SD card port along the top panel, a microUSB input port along the upper right panel, and a rubberized access panel protecting the WAN input and USB input/output ports along the lower panel. The front panel had a 1/2 inch diameter power button along the lower 1/3 of the device and “RAVPOWER” etched into the superior aspect of the panel. The instruction manual proved to be quite useful and was well laid out. It started by detailing the meanings of the LED colors for the Wi-Fi, SD card, Power, and RJ45 Ethernet (WAN port). For example, when the Wi-FI LED blinked solid blue, the system was loading, and once it turned solid blue, the system was fully loaded. The LED illuminated solid green when the internet was active and was off when the internet was deactivated. If you tap the power button, the four power LED will indicate the remaining power and if you hold the power button for three seconds, you can turn on the device.
To connect to the device, you will need to download the FileHub Plus App from the IOS/Google Play Store, which is currently sitting at 3*. You can insert a USB thumb drive/USB storage device into the USB port, and then press the power button on the FILEHUB. If you navigate to Settings, and then to WIFI on your smart device, you can select FileHubPlus-XXXX. To use the device as a wireless access point, you can essentially repeat the steps above. However, instead of plugging a USB device into the FileHub, you can plug the Ethernet cable into the WAN port. Once connected to the FileHub, you can access administrative features by opening a web browser and navigating to 10.10.10.254. You can then type “admin” into the user name section, while leaving the password blank. You will be able to adjust dynamic/static IP, PPOE and other router features. Lastly, the device also served as 6700 mAh portable battery.
As noted in the introduction, I plugged a borrowed Toshiba 1TB portable hard drive into the USB port on the FileHub. I pressed the central button for 3 seconds and watched as the ascending LEDs illuminated sequentially. When the device was powered on, I navigated to settings on my phone and selected Wi-Fi. As noted in the instructions, FileHubPlus-XXXX (not actually XXXX, but a string of characters for the device ID) was present within the list. I joined the network, typed the 11111111 password given in the instruction manual and navigated to the FileHubPlus App. The hard drive had most of the Game of Thrones episodes, TNMT cartoon episodes, and several movies saved onto it. Across the top, I was able to see a battery icon detailing the remaining power, followed by sections for Videos, Photos, Music, Documents, File/Folder and System. Tapping File/Folder, I was able to visualize the saved files in a similar manner to Finder/File Manager. When I selected the movie, it started to play and she was able to enjoy a few minutes of reprieve from her abdominal pain and difficulty breathing. The device was on the slow side and took a while to index the drive and to play the videos.
To further test the device, we used a USB-A to Lightning cable to charge her iPhone 8 Plus 1821 mAh battery at about 1% for every 3 minutes of charge. This was not as fast as plugging directly into the wall, but it worked very well for us when we did not have access to a wall charger. I did not test the AP/Bridge system during this review to assess speeds, but in a pinch, this little device will provide WI-FI signal. Imagine that you are at a sporting event, messing with your drone footage, or out on a field mission with your camera and you want to offload images from an SD card to a portable drive. Similar to the issue with the hard drive above, indexing proved to be quite slow/tedious. I liked that I was able to transfer files but the UI of the App needs an upgrade and the software would benefit from some tweaking. The biggest limitation of this system is the security software on our media (DRM). To fully access the system and to use it as a portable streaming machine, you will need to consider additional software.
You can use this portable All-IN-One system to transfer your images and leave your heavier laptop at home. Perhaps you do not want to spend extra money to buy more SDcards; this system could save you money by allowing you to use a portable hard drive instead. Unfortunately, iOS devices cannot fully enjoy the same features as Android users. For example, due to limitations set by Apple iOS system, you can only access photos on your iPhone/iPad. DRM (Digital Rights Management) limits the ability to access files through iTunes. If I could make one suggestion, make sure that you access 10.10.10.254 within your browser and update the SSID password before you take the device into the wild. I was pleased with the size of the device and with the ease to which it would fit into a pocket. I highly enjoyed this portable and pocketable device. More than a simple 2.5x (6700mAh battery) portable battery, the RAVPower FILEHUB will allow you more freedom with your data. For more FAQ and useful downloads, look to the RAVPOWER website.
For more how-to information, navigate to ravpower.com
Follow RAVPOWER on FaceBook and Twitter.
Originally published at https://macsources.com on September 13, 2019.
