Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin Media Reader for iPod with Dock Connector

I bought this item recently using Amazon, and was very impressed. Basically the iPod photo card reader means that you can take your digital camera (and iPod) away on holiday and have unlimited room for all your pictures! Whenever I used to take my digital camera away, I would end up at the local internet cafe, uploading my pictures every few days - as my memory card is only 128MB. With this item it's like having a 20GB/40GB memory card!

Whilst it is true that it does go slowly, this will only be a problem for people taking hundreds/thousands of photos a day. For your average tourist/traveller, it is ideal. It takes roughly 5-6 minutes per 128mb (which is roughly 50 5-megapixel images or 170 2-megapixel images which is good enough quality for photo-sized prints) which you can leave transferring whilst you do something else.

If you need to e-mail your photos or just view them on a computer, you can plug your ipod into any USB plug on any computer, and it will show up as a new removable drive. Open up the DCIM folder and there all your photos are, in separate folders for each time you use the media reader.

The media reader also had no problems transferring video files (or any other file you put into the 'DCIM' folder on your memory card) so you can just wipe the card once it's finished and reuse it again -- which is ideal if you need to use the card continually (if you have 2 memory cards you can use 1 whilst the other is transferring, then swap them around for unlimited photo shooting!)

All in all this is a great gadget, and a must have for any ipod/camera user on the road or out and about.

I bought this to transfer photos from CF cards for my camera to my iPod video. From the product information here on Amazon, on the Belkin site and on teh Apple site I was not given the impression that the media reader is incompatible with the the iPod video. But when I connect the two I get a message on the iPod indicating that the media card reader is not supported by this iPod. No help so far from Belkin or Apple, neither seem to acknowledge that they are not providing good clear information on what constitutes iPod with dock connector.
I can only give this 1 star because I can't use it and the review won't allow zero.

As others have found to their cost this item does not work with the latest iPods. For some reason this vital info has been left off the info provided about the product on this site, which is really the fault of Belkin. I have however used this with a friend's older iPod and it worked pretty well and if bought cheap is a good solution for freeing up memory cards when travelling etc

Although I have bought this product to store pictures the unit is not compatible with Generation 5 iPODs. In fact it is only compatible with Gen 3 iPOD (that can not view images)! No where in the Amazon sales literature or infact that of Belkin this fact has been mentioned. Besides when Belkin representatives where confronted with this the impolite answer was: "We can't help if you have bought the wrong product"!! I will not buy from Belkin again.

Having only recently bought an iPod, I was pleased to learn about the media reader as I was fed up messing about with my camera and SD cards and getting them downloaded at photo shops onto CD while on holiday. A recent skiing trip meant that I had to fit in with the photo shop's timekeeping (not good) and the fact that only the manager knew how to download the shots.

So, when I heard about the media reader's capabilities, I was intrigued. Do I buy a bigger SD card and carry a couple of those or spend a little bit more and buy the reader?

What clinched it for me is an impending two week holiday that my wife and I are taking with another couple. The fact that the reader can recognise their Sony memory stick as well as my SD card means that we can both use my iPod to store our shots on until we get back.

Once it arrived, I have to be honest it felt cheap and plasticky, it works well enough, but does take some time to upload the shots. However, while this was annoying sitting at home trialing it, in reality when I used it on holiday, I just left it to get on with it while I went off and got drunk.

All in all, I'm happy with it, but I think the price is over-inflated entirely due to the 'I must have an iPod' mentality, which Belkin seemed to have expoited.