Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsGood device that needs some refinement
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2016
So I'm one of the people who bought the Lima through the Kickstarter campaign. So I've had it for quite a while now. The promise of this device is that your can roll your own cloud, accessible from all your devices, and way safer than a service run by a company, like Dropbox, where you're files are really at their mercy. And I have to say that in this regard, Lima works exactly as advertised, with a few small bugs that need to be ironed out.
It is true that the way Lima works can be annoying. If you want to replace the hard drive your Lima is connected to (say, to get one with higher capacity), you must first copy a set of hidden files from the old drive to the new one. Without these, the be drive will NOT be recognized by the Lima, and the only solution to this issue is to contact customer service so they can delete your account. Then, you create a new account, connect the new drive to the Lima and when you log in with your new credentials into the desktop Lima app, everything will start working again. Kind of a pain, I know, but not overwhelmingly so. You just have to be careful when swapping drives to ensure you copy those hidden files before switching the old drive for a new one.
Now, as I said before, Lima works as advertised. Once I installed the Lima apps in my phone and tablet and logged in, they started a process to copy all my photos from those devices to the hard drive connected to my Lima, so that they can be accessible from any device.
Also, you can add files to the Lima drive from the desk top computer, and all those new files will populate to the other devices. Like with Dropbox, what you see are thumbnails. A file will not be really downloaded to your device until you click on it. Then, if you want to keep a copy in your phone, you tap the pin icon and it's done. And the time it takes between when I drop a file in my Lima drive and when it appears in my Lima app on my phone is very small indeed, which is great.
Now for the glitches. There are only two that I have noticed, and they are not deal breakers as far as I'm concerned: one, some files tend to be duplicated. If I have the same files stored locally on both my phone and iPad, Lima will think that they are different and will put both copies into the photos folder. I have commented this with Lima and have been assured that they are working hard to create a fix for duplicates.
The second minor issue is that the first time you open the Lima app in your phone (for example), the app will automatically sync your data to the drive connected to your Lima device at home. But though I waited and waited, it never syncs100% of the files; it always gets stuck at 97 or 98%. Once again, I reached out to Lima who checked and told me that the files had all been transferred successfully, but that there was a known bug that caused the app to erroneously report that not all files had synced when in fact they had. They told me that a fix for this bug, too, is forthcoming.
As far as the app itself; it works well, although it's not flashy and it's not as full featured as ones from companies like Dropbox or Box.com. You can rename files and move them around from one folder to another, and that's pretty much it. This is where other companies have Lima beat. Then again those companies like Dropbox are big and have been at this for much longer, so it's only logical that their apps and services would be more polished. But that doesn't mean that Lima's app will never evolved or be improved or have features added to it! I look at Lima and I see it as a device still on beta; very close to being a finished product, but still in need of polish and of fixing a few bugs. This does not concern me, and the superb customer service I have received from them in every interaction I've ever had with them, puts be even more at ease that given the chance, Lima will soon be able to not only live to its full potential, but perhaps even exceed it.
In light of all of this, I chose to give Lima 4 stars. Yes, it's frustrating to use of you don't follow precise instructions (i.e. when replacing drives), and it still had a couple of minor bugs that need to be addressed. But it does what it says: it offers personal cloud storage that can be increased in size just buy plugging a new drive, and it's available in all your devices. And it's way cheaper than services like Dropbox. I chose to trust in Lima that they will eventually fix all the issues and give us exactly what they've promised. For now, it works well and I'm happy with its performance.
