Customer Reviews

Eye-Fi Connect X2 4 GB Class 6 SDHC Wireless Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-4CN

5 star:		(192)
4 star:		(97)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

Product works exactly as advertised, and is very convenient to have and I'm glad I bought it. It's easy to configure and exceptionally easy to use.

But I have two gripes about issues that I didn't discover until after I got it (but which are well-documented on Eye-Fi's website):

1) With my camera (a Nikon D40), the camera won't leave the power on to the card long enough after a picture is taken, so the pictures don't get uploaded. The workaround is easy - turn the camera off and back on. But it's annoying to have to remember to do that, because that's the point of the card - to not have to think about it. (Of course, this is really Nikon's fault, not Eye-Fi's, but it affects me nonetheless.)

2) The Eye-Fi has a feature that lets it upload both to a home computer and to a website (like Flickr or SmugMug). I knew that the Eye-Fi supported doing the uploads also to an FTP site, and I planned on using that feature to let it upload pictures to my home web server from anywhere I could get a wi-fi connection. It turned out that there were a number of problems with that plan:

a) It only uses "FTPS" while "SFTP" would have been much easier for me to set up, and much more secure

b) The pictures all go through Eye-Fi's servers before going to the FTP site, which I didn't realize (and this part isn't especially well documented), and I'm not OK with that

c) It takes a long time for the pictures to actually make it from the card to Eye-Fi to the FTP server, so it was very hard to trust that the system was working reliably

d) There's no way to tell the Eye-Fi to then NOT upload the pictures via my home wifi, if they were uploaded via FTP.

So I just don't use the "upload via FTP" feature, and that's fine.

So like I said, it's a good product that does what it says, so if you just want it to do the base things, go for it! On the other hand, if you have a D40, or you want to use it to upload to a home FTP site, consider this review before doing so.

I bought this because I take a LOT of pictures. I was afraid I would break the little tab that keeps my battery door closed because I am always taking the SD card out and putting it in my computer! The other problem is that I would often leave the SD card in the computer and wouldn't have any storage when I went out. The Eye-fi card eliminates these problems. Exactly what I wanted it for. The ONLY problem I have is that it won't let me take video in the Eye-fi sd card. This is a problem, because if I want to take video I have to put another SD card in, which is not convenient! So, if you don't take video with your camera, then the Eye-fi does exactly what it says it does and it's fantastic.
Another nice feature is that the EYE fi lets you pick pictures you want to automatically share on your Facebook or other social networking site. Something I will take advantage of soon.

i bought this because i got tired of taking the SD card out of the camera every time i was finished
taking pictures. i was a little skeptical about how well it would really work but i gotta say i'm
impressed. i use a Mac and the software install was a breeze, if you are in range of your wireless
network every picture you take is individually sent to the computer within 3-5 seconds. if you are
away from your wireless network simply power on the camera when you get home and all the pics
are uploaded instantly.

as soon as i open iphoto it instantly imports all the photos and they are ready to view. this definitely
makes my picture taking much easier !!!

Once I got this Eye-Fi card set up, it worked perfectly to transfer the photos from my camera to my computer and then into iPhoto via my home wireless network. I could take a shot, and within minutes it appeared on my Eye-Fi Center. The next time I opened iPhoto, all my photos were automatically imported. The transfer was quick and didn't slow down my camera while it was in use. You can set it up to automatically share with Facebook or YouTube. The Eye-Fi card worked exactly as I expected, without a hitch, and so receives five stars from me. But not so fast . . .

The documentation for Eye-Fi is subpar. The box tells you that you put the card into the camera, take photos and/or video, upload via your router, and then view on your computer. The reality is not quite that simple. First, the card must be set up on your computer, PC or Mac (I have a Mac), and that's where I ran into my first problems. I plugged in the supplied USB card reader, and the card immediately told me that I needed a firmware update. I clicked "continue" -- and the update failed. I tried again. Failed. Thinking that I could update later, I tried to continue with the installation. The program hung as it looked for my wireless router. I couldn't quit it, and had to restart my computer in order to safely remove the USB. I went online to see that Linksys routers posed a known problem to the card. I then figured that the firmware update might solve it. A few hours later, I tried again, and the update worked. I got past the part of the initialization the hung, only to discover that I couldn't figure out where the MAC address was to allow it on my network. I tried to go to Eye-Fi support, but the site was down, so I had to find my answer through a Google search. (The MAC address can be found when the card reader is plugged in; you just have to click on the Eye-Fi icon in the top bar for a Mac.) Once I found the MAC address and had put it on my network, I needed to create an Eye-Fi account. Check. And then it wanted to connect to my network, with a password that it imported from my Eye-Fi account. Now, I figured that it needed my network password, a WEP key. But it wouldn't connect. And the support page was still down. Finally, out of frustration after restarting my computer several times, I let it use the Eye-Fi password. And it worked to connect with my router. If the site had been up, with firmware updates working, and if the instructions had included clear directions about how to let the card on a home wireless network, it would have saved me both time and frustration. The set-up is really quite simple and quick -- once you know what to do. The Eye-Fi people seem to suffer from a need to make it seem so simple that they omit crucial information. This product gets two stars for ease of set-up; the installer works well, but the instructions are lacking.

But the product itself is great. People who want to use one of these cards with HD video cameras would be better off getting one with more memory, but 4 GB should be fine for still photos and short videos. Even though there are no directions how to change the settings, everything in the Eye-Fi Center is intuitive. You can add up to 32 private networks per card, making transfer easy at, say, your parents' house or at work. For an extra fee, you can enable GeoTracking (to label the location of your photos) and public hot spots. My only regret is that I didn't buy the Pro X2, which has a year of public wi-fi free of charge for one year.

-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

I'm a professional photographer who has bought, owned, and used 5 different versions of the Eye-Fi card.
When it works, it's amazing. We do major-event photography and we show photos on screens immediately. So, sending the photo-files from the camera through the air really gets the crowds excited.

So, what's the Problem?
Each of the versions has destroyed photos files ... 2/3 of the photo is blank, black, or banded.
Both - on the card and the file that transfers (which makes us look bad when it appears on the screen).
In some cases as many as 10% of the files were corrupted.

So, for casual photos it may be okay.
If you really need the photos ... stay away.

I bought this device to free up the time it took to change SD cards when documenting my work in the workshop. By placing my (WEP) AP in the vicinity, the system was able to upload my pictures as I took them, even to my linux server.

One snag comes when you take pictures away from one of the APs you've setup the card to use; when you do come back in range it can take several minutes for the pictures you took to upload. You must babysit the camera while it uploads to ensure it doesn't enter sleep mode.

This card is a perfect fit for a point-and-shoot camera; the write speed may be lacking in a professional context. Newer models have better write speeds, but I can't comment on them; they're also more expensive.

Overall, I knew from reading reviews what this products shortcomings would be, I bought it anyway and do not regret the purchase, and was even surprised when it worked better than expected.

This product has significantly increased my web-presence as I always have pictures of the projects I've worked on available at my fingertips. Recently I threw together a webpage for a job interview in 15 mins flat, I just scrolled through my large library of images, no hunting around for cameras and their cards to suck pictures from.

Installing it in my macbook is very easy and smooth. Put the card in my new camera that came a couple of weeks later even though I ordered both card and camera on the same day. I tested it by taking several pictures and see if they uploaded to my macbook's iPhoto immediately. Yes, it works like charm!!!! My husband was using this macbook while I was outside taking the pictures. The pictures immediately showed up on the corner of the screen while he was surfing. This card helps me to configure whether I want the photos to show up in Facebook immediately which I decided to disable that in case of bad pictures that I don't want them show up. *grins* But that is for others who may want to upload them into Facebook automatically without doing them in manual way. That is easy and very convenient for the people who aren't good with computers. That is a big plus! Remember, you must have a wireless router in order for uploads. If you don't, you can use USB to connect to your computer. Either way works.
Keep in mind that you have to keep your camera ON while you upload the pictures into the computer.
I would recommend this highly to anyone who are shopping for the memory card.

Do not normally write reviews but am inclined to. Hope this may save someone's money, time and important data.
During normal use, it destroyed and lost my photos. Unsure why this product have such a great review? This product fails to work. As the memory gets consumed, photos got destroyed. When I try to read hoping to recover my photos, my OS saying I need to format.
Maybe I have a defective one, but cannot rely on maybe especially for valuable data.

I got this device thinking that it would be cool to have a copy of my images appear on my phone or iPad for "instant preview." It turns out that as neat an idea as it would be, in practice it's so unreliable as to constitute as hazard. I would not recommend this card to anyone. Stick with regular Sandisk cards.

First, off, the included software is simply awful. It's slow to load and consumes an inordinate amount of resources. I'm on a quad-core i5 with 12gb of RAM, so there is no excuse for a simple program like this to perform so poorly.

Sticking to the included software, the card only intermittently shows up in an SD card reader if you have the software installed. This seemed to improve somewhat after the second firmware update, but transferring photos off the card onto a computer is generally a bit of a nightmare. Eventually I figured out that a background process of the software was hijacking the card from the OS and preventing it from mounting. I was only able to override this issue by using an external device (such as a printer or iPad) as a card reader, or by manually forcing the OS to mount the disk from the command line which I don't really recommend to the average user. As a result, you're forced to transfer images via wifi, which is not possible at all for RAW images. Furthermore, the card will mangle your file names on the way over.

The software for iOS is equally flaky. You have to delicately time the process as the card only remains visible during a specific 30 second window between two and two and a half minutes after you turn the camera on. So, to connect the card to your iPhone, you must turn on the camera, then wait exactly two minutes, then download the wifi password over your mobile internet connection through the phone, then move into the settings app, hope that the network is visible (it usually is not, meaning that you have to either memorize or write down the six-digit semi-random network ID), then finally repeat the whole process when the connection drops inexplicably. Completely useless in the field. It's only useful if you manage to successfully pre-configure it at home which is no small task as you must TURN OFF your household wifi in order to get the device into ad-hoc mode.

Once the iOS software is running, it will display an irritating badge notification on your phone until you connect it to your home wifi network to unload its pictures... which will create duplicates in your library.

It messes up your filenames and EXIF data during the transfer process.

On my D90, this card would sometimes cause the camera to come to a screeching halt for no apparent reason- presumably write errors. Do not stick this card in your camera if you may occasionally need to, say, take a picture quickly. It's possible that the card is overheating when I try to take more than a few pictures per minute.

The card is labeled as a class 6, but it significantly underperforms every other card I own, including regular SD cards (non-HC).

In the end, this card has proven to be nothing but a disappointment. I suspect that it might be OK for casual snapshooters and light users, but it's definitely not designed for sustained or serious use. Definitely not for shooting RAW, video, or anything else with large files.

I'd say, get this card to put in a cheapo pocket camera if you want to use your regular camera as a camera phone, and have the patience of a saint to make it work.

If you take pictures seriously, pass.

I'm running Mac OS 10.5. The card didn't work, no idea why. After an hour on the phone with a really nice customer service/tech support department, I decided enough was enough and returned the card. The only guess from tech support was my router brand (2wire) "had problems with the Eye-Fi connection."

I wish the company would just say this on their site, even if only a disclaimer. Instead, no mention of any incompatibilities, if that's indeed what it was. Their FAQ/Troubleshooting section was minimal, never addressing something basic like "Nothing happens when card is plugged in."

I also have to say I hate the way their Eye-Fi Manager inserts itself into what should be a simple, direct act: Download from my camera to my computer. Why do they need to shove options at me, every time? If I wanted to upload pics to a site, I'd be glad to have the option, but if I don't want it, I don't want the offer every time I use the Eye-Fi card.

Hopefully this will get sorted out one day. I'd be willing to try it again, but once I realized any time I'd save was being eaten up going in circles on the phone, I figured I'll stick with downloading with good old-fashioned cords, like my grandpappy used to.