Review: Nikon Coolwalker
As a photographer, I can easily fill up a memory card several times during a single photo shoot. Buying lots of cards is expensive, and eventually I need to copy them off so I can use them on a computer. I used to lug a laptop with me for the photo shoot, but that isn't always practical, like when I am walking long distances.
The Nikon Coolwalker is a battery-powered hard drive with a built-in CompactFlash card reader. Without connecting it to a computer, I can copy images from the card to the hard drive, and then the card is available to be used again. It has a USB interface, which allows me to use it as an external hard drive on my computer. I paid $270 for this device at a time when 4 GB CompactFlash cards were $400.
The Coolwalker also has a color LCD display, and it will display images. It has a video output, so it can display images on a television. It even has an infrared remote control, so you can navigate through the images on the screen. Another nice feature it has is to display the data embedded in the images.
I have had this thing for about a year and a half, and while I liked it a lot when I first got it, I have developed a list of gripes. Consequently, I am looking for a new solution.
- Low Battery Life - This was my first complaint. The Coolwalker has a lithium ion battery, and it seems fairly big. However, it doesn't last very long. I got enough battery life to copy two 1 GB cards, but if I wanted to transfer another, I would need to plug in the power supply. This problem was due in part to the slow transfer rate.
- Slow Transfer Rate - It takes a surprisingly long time to copy a card. This was particularly obvious when I started putting 4 GB cards in it. I haven't timed it, but a 4 GB card takes perhaps an hour to dump. I have been able to fill up the next card before I finish dumping the first one.
- 30 GB capacity - When I got the thing, I thought 30 GB was plenty. Indeed, shooting JPEGs on 1 GB cards, I can store a lot of photos on it. However, I am switching to using RAW files exclusively, which are about ten times as big. I almost filled the drive up in one day on a particularly active photo shoot.
- Lock-ups - The drive has locked up on me several times while using it on my computer. In all fairness, I have realized that this may not be caused my the Coolwalker. I have been using it on the USB port of my internal card reader, which is itself rather flakey. I am going to start using it on the regular USB ports of my computer and pay attention to whether it locks up again.
- No Support for Canon RAW Files - My digital cameras are Canons. The Coolwalker is made by Nikon. I shouldn't have been surprised when it told me that there were "no images" in the directory it had just copied from my camera.
Between these problems and the realization that I don't use some of the features of the Coolwalker, I am looking at the 120 GB Sanho HyperDrive SPACE. It has a published transfer rate of 20 MB/s, which is the full speed of a 133x card. That works out to less than a minute to transfer a 1 GB card. It claims to have enough battery life to transfer 100 GB on a single charge. The LCD display doesn't actually display images, but I really didn't use that feature much on my Coolwalker. Adorama.