How to use your Hard Disk or Pen Drive wirelessly? Is the HooToo Tripmate Titan the best power bank that you can buy?

The Tripmate Titan by HooToo is a 10,400mAh Power Bank & hence there are some boring numbers associated with it. Lemme get those out first.

Battery capacity	10,400mAh
Charging current	1.6A
Discharge current	2.1A max
Over current protection	Yes. Up to 2.1A by CMOS Pulse Width Modulation
USB device interface	Micro USB 2.0 for charging internal battery, up to 1.6A current
Product dimensions	96mm length x44mm width x 44mm height
Emission (EMI), safety & other certifications	FCC Class B, CE

The Tripmate Titan is neither too big in size, nor is it too heavy. I’m guessing its weight to be around 250gms. But it’s rectangular-cylinder shape gives it a logistic problem. As with our phones, we are used to having power banks in rectangular-slab shapes, so usually with one hand we are able hold them both & keep moving around. You can’t do that with the Tripmate Titan. The Tripmate Titan is also not a ‘fast’ charging device. It is an old device, so of course most of the ‘fast’ charging standards didn’t exist back then. So depending on your phone it could take up to an hour to charge otherwise ‘faster’ devices. You can get cheaper power banks with similar high capacity that will charge supporting smartphones faster. Similarly, it itself charges slower than other latest power banks, expect anything between three to four hours. Those complaints however pale in front of its true purpose. The tripmate Titan is an over-and-above device, because while it is a 10,400mAh power bank, & it can charge most phones at least twice & many other like iPhones over three times, it is a travel companion. It is a travel router. It is a USB streaming device. It is all this and more at a relatively low price. I got mine for ₹ 4,999 back in 2016.

You can plug in any USB storage device into the USB port of the Tripmate Titan & then it can stream that storage over a WiFi signal that it creates. A detailed description of how it does that is demonstrated in the video linked at the bottom. You can plug-in hard disks, you can plug-in pen drives & then access these wirelessly via an App which is available for Android, iOS & even iPads. Using this App multiple devices can simultaneously stream content from a singular media storage device. This is easily the cheapest way to turn any storage device in to a Network Access Storage.

You can access your devices on your PC without the need of any extra App or software. Just type in 10.10.10.254 in your browser after you are connected to the WiFi that the Tripmate Titan generates. You can even map your storage as a network drive & then access it like a regular plugged-in, wired storage. It supports NTFS & FAT16/FAT32 file systems for plugged-in devices & it can stream to CIFS Protocol devices, Samba Services devices & it even supports DLNA compatible devices, so if your TV supports it, you can access your media content stored in a hard drive kept anywhere else, wirelessly via the Tripmate Titan. Plus it has an RJ45 Ethernet Port which you can use to convert wired internet in to a WiFi network. For example if you don’t get a strong 4G/5G connection at your workplace, you can push wired internet in to the Tripmate Titan & it will generate aa WiFi network that your phone can connect to.

WiFi standard	802.11 b/g/n
Transceiver	1TX 1RX
Frequency	2.4GHz
Antenna	Chip Antenna
Speed	72Mbps for 20MHz 150Mbps for 40MHz
WAN Port Protocol	Ethernet
WAN Port Speed	100Mbit/s

I’m almost about to celebrate my 5 year anniversary of ownership of my tripmate Titan & in my honest opinion the benefits of such a device are many.

• It is a pretty large capacity power bank to start with. 10,400mAh is enough to juice up most phones at least twice.
• It lets multiple devices connect simultaneously to a storage device. This can not only help access files from a device, but you can send files to this device so other devices can access them. It’s like building a home server for cheap. It’s faster than Bluetooth, & in more cases, more convenient than finding multiple cables & using a PC as a bridge.
• This makes storage drives wireless. This makes your usage of them wireless. Granted the speeds are not crazy fast, but it is plenty fast for most of us.
• Since you are not yanking a device around, it helps in protecting the ports of an everyday-use storage drive. That’s how I use it the most.