Add Wi-Fi to Your Camera With Monoprice's New MicroSD WiFi Adapter

Adding Wi-Fi compatibility to digital cameras is a step that manufacturers were bound to take eventually. However, while many new cameras come equipped with this feature, equipping your older camera with Wi-Fi has not been easy - that is until Monoprice released its new $35 MicroSD Wi-Fi adapter.

Other options like the SD card Wi-Fi adapter from Eyefi have been somewhat difficult to install and use. The new MicroSD option simply requires you to have a MicroSD card on which the adapter can be attached. The new Wi-Fi adapter from Monoprice is compatible with MicroSD cards up to 32GB in size.

If you think about it, having an adapter that can attach to your existing MicroSD card is actually advantageous, as you won't have to remove your storage card to enable Wi-Fi on your camera.

What Can You Do With the Wi-Fi Signal?

The MicroSD adapter does not actually connect your device to the worldwide web. Instead, it creates a personal hotspot that up to five devices can connect to via Wi-Fi.

In other words, once the adapter is enabled you'll be able to connect to it through a new SSID found in the networking center of your desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Once connected to the camera's network, you'll have instant access to the device's storage contents. So instead of having to pair a device via Bluetooth and manually initiate file transfers, you'll be able to quickly connect to the device via Wi-Fi and browse its contents as if they are part of your native operating system.

Signal Range, Transfer Speeds, and Other Specs

Indoors the adapter has a signal range of 16 to 55 feet, whereas outdoors the signal stretches as far as 82 to 164 feet. This signal strength should be sufficient within most households and data transferring scenarios.

Another unique aspect of the new adapter is that it does not require any special apps or software to access and download the media. You simply need to have a web browser installed on the device you're using to connect to the camera.

For example, once connected to the card you can fire up Chrome and you'll be welcomed with a convenient, thumbnail-oriented file browsing interface.

The web-based image navigator lets you quickly download images from the camera one at a time, in groups, or by folder. When you download multiple images at once they'll be compressed into a .TAR archive, so you will need a program like WinZip or 7Zip to extract the media after it has been transferred.

The transfer speed will be dependent on the strength of your Wi-Fi card and its proximity to the camera's Wi-Fi adapter. However, if you're trying to transfer gigabytes of images from your camera to another device then it would be faster to just use a card reader.

Still, the Monoprice adapter excels in convenience and is a more suitable solution for people looking to transfer a few images here and there without having to endure annoying individual Bluetooth file/folder transfers.