Aplimln SD Card Reader for iPhone iPad, 3 in 1 SD Card
Aplimln SD Card Reader for iPhone iPad, 3 in 1 SD Card Viewer with MicroSD & SD Card Slot for Trail Game Camera, Photography Memory Card Adapter, Simultaneous Charging and Card Reading, Plug and Play
This item arrived nicely packaged in a plastic bag. I actually chose this item incorrectly, as I have a samsung phone and this SD reader is for apple products. But i gave this to my brother to use and he says it’s good, easy to use and does the job nicely. It also seems very cheap for what you ge
This has a lightning connector so is for phones or iPads that still have that port. To future-proof it though, it could be used with an adapter for USB-C ports.
Once an SD card is plugged in, it can be accessed from the FILES which is the blue folder icon along the bottom of my iPad screen. There are instructions on this page which you can come back to after purchase if you need some pointers.
I bought this to save my files from procreate to an SD card.
It works perfectly, apart from being able to use SD and micro SD at the same time
It’s not immediately obvious but this connects via a lightning connector and not USB-C, though the latter is a very recent addition to the Apple lineup. As it’s Apple things are never simple but I was immediately able to transfer files back and forth using the “Files” app that’s pre-installed on your phone. Where it gets fiddle is finding them and working with them afterwards but I managed in the end. As has been mentioned, the instructions aren’t great and may be a little outdated when purchased so an online download would be handy.
The card reader looks very cool in glossy Apple white and came with the reader and the lightning connector protected with plastic, this despite being well packaged and unlikely to be damaged shows an attention to detail that impresses.
All the card formats I tried were immediately found and read and wrote without a glitch. The phone I used was a 14 Pro Max for the record. A quick and simple way to archive your files either to free up space or ready to switch to a new phone.
Seeing this device available via Amazon Vine, I thought it could be useful in future and presumed that I could also use it on my Android phone via a lightning to USB-C adapter (of the opposite type to the one used before) but that does NOT work. Nothing recognised.
I did however, after initial difficulty, get it to work with someone else’s i-phone, so it does work as intended.
The one I received has a lightning power input, NOT USB-C as stated on the website. Furthermore, powering my Android phone with a lightning connector directly into the card reader device and the device’s little lightning cable connected to my phone via an adapter charges at one third of the rate (3 times the estimated time to full) compared with the lightning cable + adapter into the phone without the card reader. Have not had the opportunity of seeing if charging of an i-phone is similarly affected, though I suspect it would be. All the same, it may be useful to have some top-up charging if spending a while transferring data etc.
In summary, it works as intended with an i-phone. It is not the device’s fault that it doesn’t work with an Android phone using an appropriate adapter. It does not bother me that the power input is lightning, not USB-C as stated, but others may be disappointed in that. Almost knocked off a star for that but just 3 stars would be unfair.
These days, with the use of the Cloud, there’s probably not a huge need for something like this for transferring pictures and data. However, it can have its useful moments… it can bypass the need to put your DSLR photos on the computer first before transferring to your phone/iPad (if that’s what you need or want to do) and you can download a few quite quickly; and for us it’s useful for my Dad to be able to quickly transfer a couple of his photos rather than boot his computer up etc. Dad can also at the memory card of photos to his digital photo frame, which makes things easy to share pictures. It could be useful also to download your photos or files to SD card if your memory is getting low and you’re away from your computer for a time… but, again, the Cloud is super useful for that so it’s personal preference really I guess. But it does give you the option to do these things without the need for WiFi, which is a bonus. It’s reasonably straight forward to use.
I was a little confused as the advert suggests you can connect devices to the USB-C connector.
This is a Apple lightning connectors for devices that support that interface such as an iPad or iPhone, it also has a SD Card reader, a Micro SD card reader and a passthrough Apple lightning connector to use the readers AND charge the device at the same time.
Plugging the device into my Apple iPad Air and accessing the files through “files’ icon shows as and SD Card when a card is fitted, this worked perfectly and I was able to access video files on the SD Card without issues.
Plugging in the original Lightning cable allowed me to charge the device at the same time as using it to access the Micro SD or SD Cards I tested.
For some reason the advert shows USB-C Devices being able to connect, this is not thew case for this device.
These are very basic and quite light weight, whilst they function exactly as expected they do not have a quality feel, the plastic feels quite brittle and the when knocking around the my cable back they sound hollow and flimsy.
On the plus side they are bright white and match in with the colour of apple adapters and function perfectly on my iPhone and iPad.
This SD card reader is a handy little accessory, that plugs into the lightning port on an iPhone/iPad. It allows you to read/write both standard SD cards and microSD cards on your iOS device.
In my tests the card reader was initially not recognised, but after restarting my iPhone I was able to plug the accessory in and have it read SD cards no problem. There is a useful ‘getting started guide’ explaining how to access the memory cards on your iOS device, but essentially you use the ‘Files’ app and browse under ‘Locations’ where you should see any SD cards appear listed underneath. I was able to successfully read and write to both SD cards and microSD cards. This is really useful addition to your iOS device, if you want to backup your photo library onto external storage or perhaps use your iPhone to quickly check the contents of an SD card. Note this will only work with iPhones/iPads equipped with a lightning port, not the newer USB-C iPhones or iPads. Highly recommended!
There were two of us that tested this by transferring photos from an SD card to an iPad. Both of us are pretty tech savvy.
The instructions looked really simple to follow, but it ended up taking the best part of an hour to get 9 photos showing in the Photo App on the iPad! The actual card reader worked brilliantly, and getting the photos transferred to the “Files” app was no problem and was pretty quick. Getting the photos then transferred to the Photo App for viewing was the problem!
Now, as this was the first time that we’ve transferred photos from a camera to an iPad, we did think it would take a bit longer than it should, but things that should have been on the screen according to the instruction manual (see photos), just weren’t there. After several readings of the instructions and attempts, we finally succeeded by a round-the-houses route, but I suspect that there is a solution that would work much quicker if we only knew what it was!
My rating for the SD Card reader itself would be the full 5 stars, but I’ve knocked one off for the instructions. At the time of this review, the iPad was on iOS 17.3, so I suspect that the instructions would have been very good for an earlier iOS version (they say iOS13 or later).
If you’re thinking of getting one of these, maybe research how the files should be transferred in advance?
If you’re the seller, how about having the opportunity to download a pdf file of current instructions from the listing?
This SD card reader looks workmanlike if rather cheaply constructed. It is claimed to be suitable for use with older Apple i-devices having a lightning socket. The latest i-devices use USB-C and this item will not be suitable.
The reader has three slots, one for the common larger physical size (SD card), one for the common small size (micro SD) and one with a lightning symbol on it handy for keeping the i-device charging whilst transferring files.
Having plugged the reader into my old iPhone, and a micro SD card from my camera into the reader, it all worked fine. Files could be read and copied at a decent speed, quite good enough for copying files of photos.
A decent enough SD card reader for the older i-device.