Running out of space on your iPhone? Need to be able to backup on the go? Check out the latest iXpand Flash Drive from SanDisk.

Product on Review: SanDisk iXpand
Manufacturer: SanDisk
Street Price:
32GB: GBP £29.99 / USD $22.99
64GB: GBP £43.69 / USD $33.49
128GB: GBP £51.25 / USD $45.99
256GB: GBP £88.79 / USD $73.99

SanDisk, now part of the Western Digital group, have been producing storage devices for over 30 years and have become a household name in the memory card and flash drive market.

Today we’re looking at something a little out of the ordinary, a flash drive that can be used with your PC, via the usual Type-A USB connection, or with your iPhone through the Lightning port.

Available in 32GB through to 256GB, the iXpand can give you valuable breathing room on your iPhone if you find that your device is filling up but you don’t want to lose your photos, saving yourself the monthly charges associated with additional iCloud storage capacity.

With USB 3.0, data transfers are quick and easy and with SanDisk’s iXpand App, available from the App Store, automatic transfers can be configured to further optimise the experience.
Further to that, thanks to a flexible design, SanDisk claim the drive can be used with your iPhone without removing it from its case.

For £29.99 / $22.99, you can grab yourself an additional 32GB of iPhone storage, vastly cheaper than purchasing the higher capacity phones from Apple, but is it any good? Let’s find out.

SanDisk on the iXpand:

Designed to be the perfect companion for your iPhone, the iXpand Flash Drive offers an easy way to free up space on your iPhone, automatically backs up your camera roll, and even lets you watch popular-format videos straight from the drive4. The drive has both a flexible Lightning connector that works with most cases and a USB 3.0 connector to plug into your Mac computer or PC so you can easily move your stuff where you want it. The iXpand Flash Drive also includes encryption software that lets you password-protect files, so you can share your content while keeping sensitive files secure across your devices5. Take all the photos and videos you want—the iXpand Flash Drive delivers a fast and simple way to free up space on your iPhone so that you’re always ready to capture more memories.

Technical Specifications

Capacity:
32GB/64GB/128GB/256GB

Interface:
USB 3.0

Connector:
USB-A
Lightning

Compatibility:
Windows Vista®, Windows® 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Chrome OS, Mac OS X v10.8 and higher. See device compatibility.

Dimensions (L X W X H):
17mm x 59mm x 13mm

Packaging & Closer Look

The iXpand drive lands in a cardboard and plastic packet, with the drive itself in a vacuum-formed plastic section. The front of the packaging clearly states what the drive does, who it’s for and how it works.

The reverse of the packaging is a wall of text, giving you plenty of information if you need it. There’s a handy scissor-line to follow, giving you easy access into the packaging.

The drive is relatively large by today’s standards, at 57mm long and 12mm wide, but it can’t really be compared to a typical drive. The rubber loop on the right is stiff and allows only a small amount of flex to be plugged into the bottom of your iPhone/iPad.

The small recess that the Lightning adaptor sits into also provides a softer point-of-contact than the metal USB housing, to prevent the back of your phone from being scratched. A small rubber coating on the recess would’ve been nice, for that reason. However, as you’ll see, it’s not been that well tested, as far as we can tell.

The reverse side looks pretty similar, nothing much to report here.

When plugged into the phone, it doesn’t protrude too much and leaves the phone perfectly useable while you transfer data to it, but if you’re not using a case, the metal housing will contact the glass back on an iPhone X which is very likely to cause scratches.

Software & Performance Testing

When you first insert the drive into your iPhone’s Lightning port, the phone immediately recognises the device and asks to divert you to the App Store to download the iXpand App. The application is small in size and very quick to download so you can be up and running in no time. However, the application itself takes a long time to complete any task, particularly if you’re backing up tens of gigabytes, like I did. Even doing something like opening up your Photo Albums to choose which photos to back up was slow, taking about 90 seconds, and then scrolling through was laggy and laborious; it didn’t feel well-optimised at all.

The experience may be better on a newer iPhone, but my iPhone X feels perfectly quick in all other tasks and, at least in my opinion, is far from being “an old phone.”
Check out our short software demo below:

CrystalDiskMark is an open source disk drive benchmark tool for Microsoft Windows. It provides us with a simple benchmarking tool for basic devices such as flash drives

Conclusion

The SanDisk iXpand is a cost-effective, small form, high capacity USB drive that gives iPhone users another option when it comes to running out of space.

We liked the design of the drive, with the back-on-itself styling, but the metal USB housing would touch the glass back of the iPhone X that we tested it with and that’s just not on; scratching your phone that cost you close to, if not more than, a thousand pounds just doesn’t bear thinking about.

We’d also like to see a much sturdier locking mechanism for the Lightning male connector, that could double up as a buffer to prevent the device scratching the back of your phone. Also, as another added bonus, it’d enable you to tag it onto your keyring and take it with you.

While we complain about the likelihood of the drive scratching your phone, you’re more than likely using a case anyway and that won’t be an issue. However, the software isn’t great, at all. It’s sluggish and very invasive if you don’t want to use the drive straight away; it’ll constantly ask for access to the app while the drive is connected. Not to mention that it takes hours to perform a backup of around 25GB of photos. We’re not entirely sure of the exact timing, but it was definitely in excess of 3 hours, amounting to around 2.5MB/s – 3MB/s.

If, like me, you went for the lowest capacity option when purchasing your iPhone, you might find this device is capable of saving you a large sum of money. At the time of writing, the iPhone 11 Pro, with 64GB is £1049, whereas the 256GB option will run you £1199. Buy yourself a 256GB iXpand and save yourself about £80. However, the software needs some work before we can really recommend this as a truly viable replacement.

The SanDisk iXpand offers a unique way of freeing up space on your iPhone or iPad but it needs some refinement before it’s really usable.

Pros
+ Looks funky
+ Quirky and unique
+ Reasonably priced

Cons
– Takes a really long time to back up
– Software is sluggish and intrusive
– Likely to scratch the back of your phone

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