The
Leef iBridge is the answer to a couple of our recent prayers. It is an elegant, MFI certified, USB and Lightning drive solution for Lightning port equipped iPhones and iPads that allows users to transfer data directly between a Mac or PC via USB drive to their compatible iOS device. It supports unprotected video and music files in the full range of formats supported by Apple on these devices (including ALAC) as well as Office-style document types. Read onto to see why we like it a lot, and why iOS photographers and videographers will love it as well.
If you've been reading the site lately, you'll notice that I have been bemoaning some of the changes to the way the Music app in iOS works now that Apple Music has arrived. Not only is the new
Music app UI overly complicated and unintuitive , an active Apple Music subscription
kills the ability for the Music app to play ALAC files when you are on the go. The Leef iBridge fixes both of these issues, thank to both its ease of use, and the clean and elegant design of its companion iOS app.
Android users have long been able to manually transfer files between a Mac or PC to their smartphone, thanks to the ability for Android phone storage drives to be mountable on a computer desktop. Dragging and dropping files between an Android smartphone is as easy as dragging and dropping files to any USB drive or any other external drive. Apple does not allow the same access to the iPhone or iPad file system in the same way, partially as a security measure and partly because file syncing is either undertaken through iTunes or iCloud. You can of course use Airdrop for this purpose too, although file support is more limited, and quite frankly, it doesn't just work as advertised -- its auto-detect function can be hit or miss, making it unreliable.
However, manually dragging and dropping files between your Mac or PC and your iOS device is now a reality. The Leef iBridge is just one of several devices that support this capability, but it is one of the more elegant solutions out there. Both the hardware and the companion app are thoughtfully designed and make it a great little accessory for iPhone and iPad users. We particularly like how the companion handles multiple functions with a simplicity that is missing from the Music app for iOS -- although it handles multiple functions, its interface is quite cluttered and clunky as a result. Not so with the Leef iBridge and its companion app.
The Leef iBridge playback interfaces for movies and music are very simple and uncomplicated, much like the original Music app for iOS used to be before Apple Music integration was forced upon it. This makes it a very simple process for transferring ALAC files, for example, across from your computer to your iOS device and then playing them. The files can be played back directly from the attached drive, or they can be instantly transferred between the Leef iBridge and the app's internal storage – this is of course governed by the amount of internal storage on your device. The same is true of video files as well. The ability to quickly access and view Office-style documents is also neat.
While the media playback features of the Leef iBridge will be popular with users, it has another compelling trick up its sleeve – the ability to record video and take photos and have them stored directly to the Leef iBridge, instead of clogging up your internal storage. This is a boon for iOS users stuck with only 16GB of internal storage, in particular, although most people will find this feature great to have. You can also transfer your iOS Photos app photos to the Leef iBridge or from the iBridge back to your Photos app.
The Leef iBridge is available in 16GB ($60), 32GB ($80) , 64GB ($120), 128GB ($200) and 256GB ($400) options. It was first unveiled at CES early this year and the only downside from our perspective is that we didn't get our hands on it sooner.
-- Sanjiv Sathiah
Top