Wireless Reviews

Wireless seems like maybe it used to work. Now it’s some different screens like a maze where you go down one hall looking to accomplish something only to either have a locked door or a dead end. If you find a hallway that is successful, and you move forward a little, that will probably be as far as you go. I’ve been working on this for multiple days. After formatting my disc of three pictures I had (thankfully only three, I now can turn WiFi on and off. Then it starts doing something on the screen. No instructions, just some squares move around on the screen. So because WiFi was turned on I head to the WiFi settings on my phone and after a few tries I see the Nikon camera come up and let me click on it. Now I think I’m getting somewhere. But wait. Dead end. Or a hidden door maybe? The screen on the camera starts with the moving squares on the screen and says negotiating. Not sure what that means. I wait. Still going. Nothing changes on the camera or the phone. I get off my WiFi screen on my phone and then the camera stops and turns off my WiFi. Hmmm. I guess that was wrong. So then I try again and leave it go negotiating longer. Still no. Dead end. WiFi off. Do I really need Wireless? Don’t know. If I stumble onto another step maybe I will post it here. I mean I have nothing else better to do than to stare at my camera negotiating... I guess. Or maybe I’m supposed to do something. We will see. The saga continues...

It’s virtually impossible to take a photo with this, and I think it’s because Wireless is a disaster. When it finally does connect, you’ll be able to take one or two photos with 30 seconds to two minutes of lag between for the live view to update to what you’re actually photographing. Usually, after about 2 to 3 photos, it will lose its connection, you’ll have to go back into your Wi-Fi settings and find the device again to reconnect it. Then, if you’re lucky, you will actually find a connection again in Wireless . Most of the time using this is spent waiting for the live view to update or fixing a lost connection to your Wi-Fi settings. When it is actually connected, it’s so laggy that the live view can sometimes not update for longer than a minute or more—if at all.

I actually sent my WU-1a remote back to Nikon to have it checked because I was unable to get a connection for long periods of time when I needed it. They sent the device back saying that I has no issues. So, it must be Wireless .

I was trying to use it again today after a year or so of forgetting about it (because when I did try to use it in the past, I was unable to actually get it to do what I needed). Today, I was able to get to it take two photos before it disconnected again. I came to search for an app update, because I thought “it must have been updated within the last year due to the bugs and issues making it impossible to use“. Surprise, no update!!

Wireless is such a disappointment. I have the Coolpix p900, which I love, but Wireless is practically useless. And since the latest updates, both Apple iOS & Nikon WMU, it’s even worse.
Wireless itself lacks many features that I would think should be easy & obvious: “select all” should allow you to select all the pictures not just clear all the ones I checked by hand. How about the ability to download videos to my iPhone and/or iPad? As it is, I either have to download to pc & Dropbox to my iPad or I need an Apple lighting plug to card reader.
More often than not, I can’t download more than 10 pics before I get “Camera Disconnected”, yet many times my iPad shows that it is still connected to the camera but Wireless shows the WiFi connection is gone requiring a reboot of the camera & app. Other times the camera does disconnect & still other times the camera actually powers off. Also, since the recent update many photos show as a gray box with a red X in Wireless . But sometimes, if I exit & come back, they’ll now be available. And worse, Wireless will just stop during downloading, leaving me to figure out which photos did actually download & which ones I need to try again. Except it does the same thing all over again.
Please, Nikon, please, you are better than this or at least you can be. Fix these issues & upgrade Wireless to make it useful.

If this is with major bug fixes I’d hate to see the performance prior. It’s slow to connect and quickly drops the connection anytime I attempt to utilize any function. I can’t download photos or take photos using Wireless the only thing it seems to allow me to do is view photos using my phone as long as I don’t want to do anything else. That can be done on the camera in a fraction of the time.

Nikon definitely needs to improve the connectivity and interface of the MWU-camera-phone. This is currently unusable and was a waste of money. New DSLR come Ready to connect but also with hefty price tags. Nikon isn’t a cheap brand by far and my D7100 is still very serviceable but if it comes down to mobility and digital upload needs I might as well take photos with my phone and skip skip Nikon altogether.

I have been using Wireless since I got my Nikon D5300 Christmas of 2017, and it always has worked for me just fine. Yesterday the developers released an update for IOS, and ever since Wireless doesn’t work correctly anymore. My IPhone 7 connects to the camera correctly, but as soon as I try to download pictures with Wireless , a window saying, “camera disconnected” shows up, and that’s it. I tried several troubleshooting steps, deleting and reinstalling Wireless , restarting my IPhone, turning off Bluetooth; all to no avail. This is very disappointing, especially considering that the update was supposed to take care of several bugs, and STABILIZE the connection. At the moment Wireless has become useless to me, and I hope to see an update that takes care of this major problem rather sooner than later.

I bought a Nikon D3300 camera about 4 years ago. I've been using Wireless to get the pictures from the camera to my phone. When I first used Wireless , it disconnected from the camera constantly. I figured the developers would fix the issues. Well, 4 years later Wireless still disconnects constantly. It's so frustrating. If I knew of another option, I would jump on it in a heart beat.

I just downloaded 15 photos from my camera to my phone using Wireless . It literally took 23 minutes to download them. You have to connect to the camera using Wi-Fi. Then open Wireless and select the pictures you want to download. Hit the download button and say a prayer. It starts downloading the first photo, and then after about 15 seconds it just quits. You then need to shut Wireless down and start all over. After a few tries, it might download 1 picture, maybe a few if you're lucky. If you have a bunch of pictures to download, you may want to take a day off work because it will take hours of frustration to accomplish this.

I would like to think the developers would correct the problems, but if they haven't addressed them in the last 4 years, I don't think they really care.

This is without a doubt the most frustrating app I've ever used.

Wireless is freaking ridiculous. For being Japanese made I expected it to be great. My camera cannot even manage to stay connected to it for longer than 60 seconds at a time, which isn’t even long enough for me to open Wireless and allow it to begin downloading my photos. Then the few times that it actually works, it will disconnect multiple times during the process so I have to continue trying to download the same set of photos. As someone who works primarily off my phone I thought this would be amazing for being able to directly download and then upload my photos as needed without needing to bring my laptop on trips, but now that I’m spending hours just trying to get 10 photos off the camera it only makes me angry and ruins my entire work mood since I can’t get my work done.

I use an iPhone 7 and Wireless is literally just a waste of space on it. I’ll probably just upgrade my phone to the new iPhone and completely get rid of my DSLR camera at this point because the convenience is gone.

I love my Nikon cameras, but I recently purchased a canon mirror less just to try it out, and honestly my next DSLR will most definitely not be a canon. Wireless is a big reason why. I’ve switched to an iPad Pro so now whenever I use my Nikon I have to lug out my 2012 Mac just to upload pictures and then edit them on a dinosaur. Wireless has never worked for me since the day I got it sometime in 2014. It always disconnects my camera in the middle of downloads. It has a VERY slow download speed and even slow for previews. Oh- and you at to click to view the full picture? Forget about it, you’ll be spending at LEAST half an hour to download pictures through Wireless after a good photo shoot. Apps are supposed to make life easier and this one does NOT. Such a disappointment, especially after all these years.

I’ll admit, I don’t take many photos. Heck, the last photo session I had was at the beginning of COVID lockdown. But back then, Wireless worked well. I was able to wirelessly transfer my photos from my wi-fi enabled D5300 to my iPhone fairly easily.
Before that, I used Wireless when vacationing in Iceland, even when I didn’t have cell service, I was able to connect to the camera’s wi-fi and transfer probably about 100 photos so I could post them to social media or send to friends whenever I DID have service.
Unfortunately, Wireless that used to work remarkably well (although not the fastest or prettiest) has not been updated for some time and no longer functions with the current operating system.
I hope Nikon or their developers update Wireless soon now that everyone is out-and-about again after years of not being able to.

A common problem send to be the camera disconnecting during the download of photos. Many have suggested putting the receiving device in airplane mode. This seems to help on occasion, but for me (at least) it does not solve the problem. It would seem Nikon could improve Wireless considerably, but it’s clear they’ve given up on it as there have not been any upgrades in over 2 years. You’re left on your own to make it work, and with limited options to make it work it’s much better to download images directly from the camera to a computer using the USB cord or downloading the photos directly off of the SD card.

Wireless always connects quickly and works well EXCEPT it is infuriating that if you download more than one photo, it downloads them at a reduced size! I didn’t find this out until after I had downloaded a batch of very special photos, then deleted them from the camera card and reformatted the card. The full resolution photos were then lost forever, and I was stuck with 1440x1080 images. If you want full resolution photos saved to your device, you have to download each photo individually, and select to save it at original size. This is a ridiculously enormous flaw. It takes forever to go in and select a photo, select “download”, and select the size, then repeat. It’s much quicker to use a card reader.

Camera: D3300 (with WU-1a adapter)

Phone: iPhone SE (same chipset as the 6S, iOS 10.3.3)

Boy, Wireless is a pain to use. It's missing a number of potential features purely due to Nikon'a lack of trying.

First, the connection does get wonky sometimes. I've found Wireless locks up often, especially if you're moving the camera around frequently. But when it works, it does work (and why I didn't give it one star).

Cons:

- The photos downloaded from the camera directly to the iPhone's camera roll are NOT the RAW files, despite being "Full Size". Even if you don't shoot in JPEG, Wireless will compress the RAW file to one before saving it. Major drawback, especially with the power of mobile devices, suite of mobile software, and amount of mobile storage these days.

- No video. I understand from a technical standpoint why they don't allow video recording LIVE (bandwidth)--however, an option to set up the camera using the phone as the viewfinder and then being able to at least trigger a recording (app view could go black during) would be nice and easy to implement. For cameras without swiveling screens, it would be an invaluable feature when you're not able to be behind the camera itself.

- The self timer is VERY limited, only to a few seconds. It should be totally user definable. Second, it freaking resets after each time you take a shot. Bad shot and want to quickly retake? Too bad, you have to open and reset it again. Really dumb oversight.

Tip: Hold your phone REALLY close to the WU-1a.

If I’m even 1 or 2 feet away, it never works well — stalls or freezes, drops connection, starts a photo download but just quits without warning, refuses to download multiple selections, etc. Just like everyone else is complaining. But hey, that’s the normal distance that anyone would try using this!

But … if I hold my iPhone right next to the WU-1a, like REALLY close, almost touching it, it works great!

I think this closeness lets my iPhone establish a WiFi connection to the WU-1a that is OVERWHELMINGLY stronger than any other nearby WiFi.

I suspect the WiFi unit in the WU-1a is very weak. Or maybe very sensitive to WiFi units nearby that are more powerful than my iPhone’s WiFi (which everyone’s home WiFi units are), or something like that. Or maybe it’s just Wireless . Whatever. In any case, holding my iPhone RIGHT NEXT TO the WU-1a has solved all my problems.

I got the idea to try this from another comment here that suggested moving far away from competing WiFi. That’s really hard to do in my urban apartment. But moving the iPhone very, VERY close to the WU-1a has the same effect. Ta dah!

I have both an older iPad mini and an iPhone 6 and have used WMU on both for over a year.
The concerns over connecting and disconnecting during use seem to be not an issue with WMU but rather with how the iOS wifi works. I attempted to use my WMU during graduation at Radio City Music hall. I could connect to the WMU but not for long. The next day while at home I tried again and it worked flawlessly. This morning again after a huge party last night the connection was fantastic. It quickly showed me all 177 images on my D7100 and transferred quickly 4 full sized files to my iPad mini.
The difference in usability seems to be that when used in an area with numerous wifi connections available the WMU has a hard time staying connected. Even in airplane mode my iPhone wanted to grab the best "internet" wifi connection and I believe is the reason the WMU had difficulties in Radio City Music Hall.
So if you are in an area with limited this app connections available the WMU should work great. Use it in a very public area with lots of wifi connections and it may struggle.

I've read some reviews here and most seem understandable; however I have not encountered any major problems with Wireless itself. Recently purchased a D5500 and it works great. You can connect through a this app network and take pictures with your smartphone, & download the ones you currently have on your camera. Only gave 4 stars for two things, occasional freezes, albeit small; and the inability to record/film by using Wireless . It only lets you take pictures and sure that's good, but it lacks the video recording feature and that's what makes it innovative and truly practical. Only hoping they upgrade the software for everyone to use easily.

Wireless has been working perfectly fine but I just noticed the other. When you select all the pictures before you start downloading the photos. They will save in your phone as low equality. To get the original picture you have to of course have your camera settings to optimize. When you download pictures from Wireless make sure you do one at a time. That way a screen will pop up and say how you want to download the photos. Original and gives you another two more options. That doesn’t pop up when you try to get all the photos in one sit. I checked at the setting and it doesn’t say. Maybe try getting that fix please!

This is a very simple app, once you figure out how to set the WiFi connection between camera and iPad. I am using a D7200 and an iPad Air (4th Gen) running iOS 15.5. Wireless does exactly what it is supposed to do: let you upload and view photos from your camera to your iPad or iPhone. Your files are uploaded as JPGs, even if you use raw files on your camera. Wireless does not do any cropping, color correction or exposure correction. It gives you a good idea of how your photos look just as you shot them. This is an example of an application that does one thing and does it well. I think so many of the negative reviews are because people expected it to do more than it does.

It seemed confusing in the beginning, and it took a second to figure out. But once you do get it figured out it’s an amazing app. Your camera should have a wifi if it’s compatible. Connect your phone or laptop to the cameras wifi. Once it loads in you can view all of your cameras photos on your device and you have to option to save them to your device. It takes a while to download just make sure your screen does NOT shut off otherwise you’ll have to restart. You can also go to the take photos option on Wireless while your device is connected and take pictures on your device through the camera. I genuinely really appreciated Wireless.

I see a lot of reviews about Wireless not working and/or technical problems but I’ve had nothing but success and I’d like to share how to work Wireless . To begin, My grandpa wanted pictures of his vacation trip that he had on a memory card to save onto his camera roll on iPhone. So to do this, the camera has to be turned on with the memory card containing the pictures in it. Then press the Wi-Fi button or go to settings on the camera to connect to a device through Wi-Fi. Then on the phone’s settings, it should recognize the cameras Wi-Fi and it will be easy to connect to it. Then the camera will say it’s negotiating and that’s where Wireless comes into play. Once on Wireless , there’s a symbol on the top left with a cross through it representing the Wi-Fi connection. Once it is clicked, the phone and camera should completely connect through Wireless and the photos from the camera will be able to be accessed on the phone on Wireless . All the photos on the camera can then be downloaded onto the phone.

I have never had a problem with Wireless. It does exactly what it is designed for: transfer photos wirelessly to your phone. Many of the negative reviews seem to be people not understanding what Wireless is designed to do or how to use it. All I need it for is to get some pics from camera to phone so I can share them. It does that easily. When I want to do editing I connect to my computer and download them all.
Don’t be scared off by the lousy reviews but also don’t expect more from Wireless than what it is designed to do.
I am just a user and I am not connected in any way to Nikon.