Aigo P670 Digital Photobank

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By Damian Koh
Jul 07, 2005

With sensor resolutions and memory card capacities continuing to skyrocket, there is a growing demand for portable storage devices. This trend rides on the importance of backing up information and, in our case, the fear of losing the precious moments captured yesterday at the Alpine Alps. The P670 Digital PhotoBank from aigo not only stores images from your digital camera, it also acts as a portable hard disk drive that is capable of holding almost anything--within its capacity--from your computer. However, all these come with a premium price tag.

Solid Like A Brick
The P670 looks stylish enough to pass off as a compact music player. Its aluminum alloy casing is able to withstand occasional bumps and knocks without any loss of data. Even though it is small in size (79 x 69 x 22mm), the device bears a considerable weight of 149g--on par or even heavier than some of the newer point-and-shoot cameras.

Besides storing photos from your digital camera, the P670 also doubles as a portable hard disk drive which we used to back up our files from our desktop. Running on its USB 2.0 port, file transfer speed was considerably fast on our test PC, the HP Pavilion t488d, coming in at slightly less than 16 seconds for 240MB of data and approximately 1 minute 53 seconds for 2GB.

When In Use
The P670 features a One Touch Button that allows users to back up, copy, transfer and delete files without connecting to a computer. It was a hassle-free affair after we connected the camera to the device--files were copied over immediately with the One Touch Button. For each copy session the P670 created a new folder with the date of transfer--a systematic way of archiving information but not user-friendly enough due to its double nature of a photobank and a portable hard disk drive.

True to its make, the P670 has a good heat dissipation system that prevents the unit from overheating during continuous use over a period of time. We felt that the small 1-inch blue OLED backlight screen display didn't justify the features of the device, though. As a digital photo storage companion, it would have scored better with us had there been a larger color LCD capable of previewing images than just Backup, Copy, Delete and Information along with time and battery life on the menu.

Connectivity options (USB connecter and port) are both located on the left of the screen display, by the side of the unit. Given its small size, the P670 compromised on having onboard memory card readers which makes it very inconvenient if the USB cable for the camera is not readily accessible.

According to aigo, the built-in Lithium-ion battery (replaceable) when fully charged is able to copy a 256MB memory card for up to 20 times. We found that the life of the battery was slightly shorter than that probably due to the time we spent figuring out which file to delete from the device as it all appears as numerical file names. Each charge cycle takes approximately 2 hours using the power adapter and can last up to 2,000 charges. There wasn't any noticeable drain on its battery life when we weren't using the unit.

Verdict
With its matt-black finish and silver panels, the P670 looks futuristic and trendy enough to carry around. It serves its primary function as a digital photo storage bank and doubles as a portable hard disk drive. However, given its number of features, the price of the P670 (S$499 (US$366.91) for a 20GB and S$569 (US$418.38) for a 30GB unit) is on the steep side.