HooToo Wireless Travel Router, USB Port, High Performance- TripMate Nano (Not a Hotspot)

Fantastic device! I am writing this review from Google Starbucks WiFi through the HooToo. I am a mobile/web developer by trade, this often means running services across multiple devices and connecting them together to make an application. Typically public WiFi will block peer-connections between devices; this is a great thing, as you don't want the guy/gal sitting next to you to connect to your machine and spoof your login sessions to your online services. But This little devices connects to the Starbucks Google Wifi, and shows the little "Accept & Connect" web window that pops up when you connect your device. The HooToo then shares your connection across devices. Presently my Android and MacBook are both connected on 10.10.10.1 and 10.10.10.2, because they share the same IP range, the two devices can now talk to each-other, this means I can start an application service on my MacBook and test an application on my Android without having to push any code to an external server. This is an order of magnitude cheaper than running services through a hotspot. I am told the throughput is reduced, as would be expected, but for local development work that requires minimal external services, this little device is "perfect". It took 2 minutes to set up (I have some experience setting up routers, and I think anyone without experience would be able to figure it out without too much trouble). As soon this thing was set up, I felt like "this tool is going to become integral for my workflow", and I wanted to buy a second as a backup device. Assuming this thing holds together with no issues after a week of use, I may have to pull the trigger on a second, device just in case this one drops out.

I'm writing this review for those of you looking for a modern (2017) solution to being able to hookup USB HDDs to your network. I have not found this information clearly explained elsewhere after much searching, and decided to experiment and report through these reviews.IF you are looking for a device in 2017 to be able to connect your existing external USB HDDs directly to your network, the Cirago, Vantec, PogoPlug, US Robotics, and Addonics devices are all very old technology now, and some never worked well in the first place.THE ANSWER; I am using successfully (in 2017) is the HooToo Travelmate Nano HT-TM02 device, which is very inexpensive and reliable. There are other new devices similar to this one that you could also try, so I'm not endorsing anyone, just saying what I've found that works.Some Warning: The Travelmate does lots of things besides being able to simply connect USB HDDs to your network, so it is easy to get confused about which features to ignore if that's all you want to do. You will need to be able to setup the device per their instructions, and be a little familiar with network terminology, but it wasn't tricky otherwise. I then used Windows 10 to map the network drive to a drive letter, and I'm accessing the same files on the HDD just as when the drive was connected directly via USB.I think you can also also set it up to access your USB HDD over WiFi (which none of those older devices could do), but I haven't tried that yet.Other options for using your USB HDD on your network:--I used PogoPlug for several years, but that company decided to abandon its users a couple of years ago. You can't even log into your own local HDDs using a Pogoplug device unless their identification server is online. Their server started going offline for days at a time, so I abandoned that solution. I wasn't even using their cloud service, so requiring online login to access your own local HDDs was stupid unless the ID service stayed online, which it didn't.--I also have a number of NAS boxes that use internal (bare) hard drives, but those boxes are expensive and don't let you use existing USB HDDs. Some have external USB ports, but I've found that mine just don't like to play nice or play well with external USB drives. FYI: NAS devices also let you do RAID protection, where USB HDDs with HooToo can't do that.--Most newer routers also have USB 3.0 ports to add HDDs to access them over your network, but most of their documentation has little or no information about external USB HDD connections, so experimenting is cost prohibitive.--I have not tried connecting multiple drives via a USB hub to the HooToo yet. Be aware that some devices don't work with USB hubs, and won't allow more than a single HDD to be connected. The HooToo device is cheap enough to get one per HDD though.

So far the device itself seems fine, but I'm down-rating it specifically for three reasons - the two of which are with the support app which is required for Android devices. It has two problems.1. Instead of being published by "HooToo", the Developer name is "NearbyExpress Tech" and the support email address is "support@taotronics.com" - neither of which are the actual manufacturer, HooToo. It's makes you think somebody is publishing a lookalike app and you're about to get scammed or install malware. The support app for something like this should be published by the actual manufacturer (HooToo).2. Installing this app warns you that it will require access to a deep range of your device permissions, far beyond what should be needed to set up and control a simple wifi hotspot like this. Especially given my concerns about the publisher, there is no way I am giving this app access to running apps, browsing history, bookmarks, my account info, my contacts, or my phone number / identity. For these reasons I refuse to install this app.3. Finally, for the life of me I don't understand why this product is listed as "Not a hotspot". The packaging, in fact, literally says "not a hotspot" on one side and "can be a hotspot" on another side. What's it gonna be, people?

well as you know iPads are expensive in India and they don't support normal flash drives as external storage device mounts. iPads can support flash drives like Sandisk I-expand which are expensive again. For people who have iPads with low internal storage like 32gb 16gb or 64gb hootoo comes in rescue. I have an iPad pro 64gb and as I use this Ipad for work so 64gb won't be enough for me.I have hard disks worth terabytes of movies, photos and other files which I would wish to access on this Ipad but cannot. I connect my power bank to hootoo to power it up and then connect my hard disk/pendrive to hootoo and voila the jobs done. Now I can stream movies from my hard disk to my Ipad wirelessly and other files too. IOS 11 doesn't allow transfer of files other than video and audio from external sources so you can stream content but not transfer from hootoo to apple devices. But there's no such issues with Android or windows machines to hootoo.T trust me this is a must have gadget for tech enthusiasts.

Edit (14-06-2020): I am being bombarded with "Can you answer this customer's question?" mails from Amazon every week, for this product, because I committed the grave sin of reviewing it. Since I have not been provided the option to opt to not receive questions for just this one product selectively, I will be amending this review to state my updated opinion that no one should be buying this product in the year 2020.In the year 2020, people use external drives greater than 4 tb in size and the devices they attach to should be capable of handling them. In the year 2020, people expect their electronics to have the horsepower to run quick. In the year 2020 people expect the related app to be a smooth and intuitive affair.This product fails in all those parameters, and hence I will re-iterate. No one should be wasting their money on this in the year 2020.I hope new visitors to this page read this, understand this, and quit asking inane questions that send me more mail to my inbox.Edit (06-08-2019): I need to state that this product is unable to handle 4 tb external hard drives satisfactorily. It slows down to a crawl if you try to stream from it. Considering this, I have to say I can not recommend this product any more.Original review: The AA battery in the pic is for size comparison purposes. The device is really tiny, ultra-portable, and weighs next to nothing.This is a device that does what it says. I use it with a 2 TB external hard drive to stream videos on my tablet via SMB server. You can use any video app that supports SMB. I use the app Infuse on my iPad. You could also use the trip mate app to stream videos, but I have not tried that and so cannot comment on how good it is. There is minimal buffering with large files. I have tried a 11 GB MKV video and it played beautifully. My external HDD is now a wireless drive, and that alone is worth the cost of purchase to me. I no longer need to use a computer to manually transfer videos to my tablet.It has an Ethernet port and can also be used as a travel router, but the range is around 5 metres by my reckoning. You’ll get the wireless signal in the same room, but not in the next room. It’s still a nice feature to have if you find yourself in a hotel or office with wired internet but no wifi. It can also be used to extend an existing wireless network, but like I mentioned this device will extend the network just an extra 5 metres or so. Extending your existing wifi range should not be the primary purpose of purchasing this. Treat it as a bonus feature.It comes with a foot long micro USB to USB cable included. You can use a 5V, 1Amp adapter to power it. A phone charger will serve the purpose. If you are on the go, then a power bank could also power it. You could connect a power bank and a thumb drive or HDD to the HooToo, keep them in your bag or backpack, and stream your downloaded tv shows or movies to your phone or tablet while traveling. How awesome is that?!On the whole I would wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who has videos on an external hard drive and wants to stream them wirelessly to their phone or tablet. On the other hand if your primary purpose is to use it just as a router, then you should look elsewhere for a dedicated router with greater range.

The Hootoo arrived in good condition. It is tiny, light, and made of cheap looking plastic. I inserted a USB flash drive containing movies and cartoons for kids to watch in car. After installing free VLC Media Player app on my devices i was able to watch flash drive contents on ipad air, samsung tablet, and samsung phones. My son has a very old smartphone he uses as a tablet. This phone would not play the movies without skips until I converted movies to a smaller filesize using handbrake. I was able to watch the same movie on more than one device and pause playback independently. This unit needs to be plugged in to usb port for power as it has no battery, a plus for me but important to know. Follow instructions to connect to HooToo as you may need to flip hardware switch, enter or change WiFi or other passwords in your app or phone's connection settings to connect.

Really extraordinary product simple to use.main use connects 1tb,2tb,3tb,4tb WD hard drives flawlessly and smoothly with tripmate app.only thing connect to the device through WiFi and switch off phones 3g or 4g internet connection otherwise will not connect.i have used Kingston mobilelite wireless G2, Micromax mmw,ravpower filehub and some other products but ignored hootoo tripmate nano till now but after using it I feel it's the best in class product.

I have had my hootoo tripmate nano for a while now and never travel without it. It provides added security and boosts the signal to spotty areas in hotel rooms for me. I recently tried to upgrade the firmware and it bricked my device but one email to Hootoo and they promptly sent me a replacement within days. It is hard to come by good customer service these days so I definitely appreciated the excellent service. I ran the firmware update on the new device without any problems and am up and running again.