When I get ready to leave my house for the day, I have a mental checklist that I rundown every morning. Â More and more lately, it seems that I have to remember more accessories designed to keep my various gadgets running. Â I’m sure a lot of you know how I feel: there’s an external battery, a personal hotspot, an external hard drive and so on. Â I might not use all of those things everyday, but I don’t want to be without if I need them. Â Before you know it, you’re carrying a lot of stuff around. Â Well, the wonderful people at HooToo took most of these things and combined them into a small, easy to carry package called the HooToo TripMate Elite.
Before I tell you how The HooToo TripMate Elite worked during the review period, you need to know what it is. Â The TripMate Elite takes a bunch of devices you probably already carry and reduces them into a single device. Â The TripMate Elite gives you an external battery, dual USB wall charger, personal cloud, travel router and personal hotspot. Â All in a package that is just a bit bigger than an Apple power adapter that comes with most Mac books. Â When you open the box you see the glossy black TripMate, a felt bag to protect it, a USB to micro USB cord and the directions.
Besides writing for the Android Guys websites I’m also a student. Â This gave me the perfect environment to thoroughly test the TripMate Elite, in particular one classroom that gets a terrible WiFi signal. Â I’m always on the lookout for accessories that can make my life easier and the TripMate Elite seemed to be right up my alley. Â I have to admit that I wondered if the TripMate was trying to do too much, would it work as advertised?
First, you need to setup the TripMate: download the app, connect it to your WiFi network, setup a password, etc. Â The process was simple and took just a few minutes. Â Once done with the setup, the first thing that I played with was the personal cloud. Â I attached my external hard drive and was able to quickly transfer files, pictures and videos to and from my connected devices. Â When I was researching the TripMate the personal cloud sounded like a nice feature, but I didn’t know how much I would use it. Â I already use Google for most of my cloud needs, so I didn’t know how much I would use a personal cloud. Â I couldn’t have been more wrong, this has quickly become my favorite feature. Â I have started to leave my external hard drive attached while at home so I can access movies from any device at any time. Â Whenever I need something from my external hard drive, it’s just a couple clicks away.
The feature that initially attracted me to the TripMate is the travel router or personal hotspot. Â This allows you to connect the TripMate to an existing or weak WiFi network, then you connect your devices to the TripMate network. Â I thought this would be helpful in a class I have, that has a terrible WiFi signal. Â Before I had the TripMate, the network was unusable, even if I could connect to it. Â When I used the TripMate, things improved greatly, now I’m able to use the network, although the speeds could be inconsistent. Â I’m inclined to believe that any issues I had at school were because of the weak signal in the classroom, not because of any issue with the TripMate. Â When it was connected to my home network, I saw much better performance. Â If you travel a lot, this feature alone could make the TripMate well worth the price.
I keep an external battery in my bag mostly for emergencies. Â I didn’t use the TripMate in this function much, but when I did it worked well. Â I was able to fully charge my LG G3 after using the network features earlier in the day. Â Having an external battery is one of those things that you forget about until you need it. Â When I needed it, the TripMate stepped up and worked perfectly despite heavy use hours earlier.
I almost feel like I am going out of my way to find something negative to talk about, but I do have one complaint. Â The mobile app and web interface aren’t very good. Â The mobile app is better than the web interface, but not by much. Â The mobile app gets bonus points because it assisted me with the setup, which was a breeze. Â Both apps feel dated and aren’t very intuitive. Â You get the hang of them pretty quickly, but I feel like the TripMate Elite deserves better.
It’s not often that you find an accessory that does so much well. Â I couldn’t have been happier when using the TripMate Elite. Â After a little more than a week in my care my TripMate has a few scratches, but works perfectly. Â For $47 this one accessory can do the work of many. Â It’s a great deal, especially when you consider how much it would cost to buy an individual accessory for each function. Â Yes, it can pick up a few fingerprints and the apps might not be the prettiest, but those are minor issues. Â The TripMate Elite would be a worthy addition to almost any briefcase or backpack, check it out.
Source HooToo