Leyio

Take a look at our video overview of the Leyio by clicking here

The Leyio is a small white device that looks a little like a bulbous portable music player, but it’s really a storage unit.

It contains 16GB of memory on which you can store files. It’s particularly handy for pictures, as you can connect a camera directly to the Leyio’s USB socket and it will automatically copy files over. The same applies to any USB memory device – slip it into the socket and you’ll be prompted to copy the files from it to the Leyio.

But the clever bit is how files can be shared: on meeting another Leyio user in the street, the two devices connect together wirelessly (the process was fairly painless) and then it’s possible to select a file and transfer it by flicking your wrist.

Files may be copied to the separate built-in 2GB USB memory key, which can be removed and plugged into a computer. On putting it back into the Leyio any new files on it will be copied to the device.

In terms of design the Leyio is very impressive. The fingerprint reader, which is used to gain access on starting it, is also used to control the device (roll a finger in the four arrow directions to scroll, and so on). Large, colourful icons make it simple to figure out what does what.

Our main problem with the Leyio is that it’s very expensive as a USB storage device, and in order to be really useful for sharing you’ll need to know other Leyio users – and in our travels while using it we didn’t find anyone with one, making it much less attractive.