If you’re anything like me, you have photos and videos scattered across multiple devices and various platforms. Trying to find a specific image to share can be difficult if you have several places to look. Enter ibi (pronounced “ee-bee” and translated from Latin meaning “there”) by Sandisk. This smart photo manager provides a platform to save, sort, and share your digital photos and videos. Check out our ibi photo review.
Setting Up ibi
The packaging contains the device, power supply cable, obligatory tech support and warranty guide, and a small card called Getting Started. The device is small and low profile. You might mistake it for a computer speaker. The legal pamphlet for Sandisk is standard. There is a two-year limited warranty on the device.
The Getting Started started guide has two icons. Plug in the device and download the app. The app takes care of everything else.
I suggest enabling auto back up, which not only backs up the media on your phone, it continues to back up media going forward. Plus, there’s no subscription service or extra fees.
Is ibi Just Another Hard Drive?
Sort of. Media is not stored in a cloud or remote server somewhere. It’s on a device that you control from your smartphone or desktop.
The software ibi uses is intuitive. Making albums and organizing images is as easy as opening an album and selecting an image.
What sets this device apart is the ability to store and sort from social media accounts and platforms like iCloud and Google. The app creates folders for each source of media (Instagram, Facebook, etc.). Albums are created by gathering media from any source that ibi is storing.
What this means is those photos of your pets that are in a Google Photo album, Facebook and Instagram can all be in one album on ibi. With one terabyte of storage, ibi holds close to 250,000 photos or 100+ hours of video.
Devices can be linked, increasing storage, and stored images retain information like date, location and device used.
You’ve Stored and Sorted. Now What?
Finally, you won’t find yourself scrolling through images while saying, “Hang on, it’s right here. Somewhere.” Now you know where everything is, and with that info you can do a lot.
- You can stream media from ibi to Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku services.
- You have the option of privately sharing images, videos, or albums with other people. The recipient doesn’t need an ibi account to view or download the media.
- You can create an “Inner Circle” of your favorite people to share memories.
- Members of your Inner Circle will be able to like, comment, and add images and videos as well.
Media storage is similar to music playlists. Everyone has a different method that works for them. The bigger hurdle is how to get all the media into a single space for storage and organization.
The ibi device meets many needs of people like me who have thousands of images and videos on several platforms and devices. I have enjoyed organizing these images into albums, and whether building albums based on a theme, location, time, or people, ibi keeps them in one place.
ibi Photo Review: Upgrades
The ibi device doesn’t work if it’s not plugged into an outlet. I would like to see an option for batteries or charging. Likewise, the initial upload took a long time. I had more than 10,000 images to back up; however, the ibi performed the upload in the background while I worked.
Also worth noting, in the age of subscription-based services, ibi is a refreshing alternative. If ibi is the only backup used for your media, I recommend a second layer of a cloud-based back up just in case the hard drive fails.
When it comes to an intuitive backup that gives freedom to sort and share digital photos and videos, I highly recommend ibi by Sandisk.
The word ibi. This smart photo manager provides a platform to save, sort, and share your digital photos and videos.
You can find ibi and read more reviews on Amazon.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The author was given a product for the purposes of this review but was not paid by Sandisk. Parentology is an Amazon affiliate and we make a commission off purchases made through the above link in this ibi photo review.