These days, with a myriad of phones, tablets and computers in the home and workplace, one of the most challenging things you can face is keeping your key files in sync across all of them. In the past, you’d have had to connect them up directly via cable and specialist software whenever you wanted to transfer the latest set of files from one device to another, but these days that’s all changed.

One way to sync data across PC, Mac, Android and iOS is via cloud storage, with most apps – including SkyDrive, Dropbox and iCloud – making it possible to keep everything up to date wirelessly. The downside of this approach is that you typically need to be online to connect to your cloud-hosted data on your mobile or tablet – you can download individual files, but it’s a bit of a faff.

Laplink Sync aims to change all that. Unlike the rather hobbled iOS app, the Android version is as powerful and fully featured as the desktop version, letting you sync all kinds of files to and from your PC as well as video and photos with your iPhone or iPad.

In either event, you’ll need access to your local Wi-Fi network to use Laplink – it doesn’t work over internet connections and neither does it automatically keep your files in sync, you need to manually run the sync process each time.

The app works in a similar way to the desktop - password-protect it if necessary, then choose which folders to sync, and how to sync them (one-way syncs in either direction are possible as well as two-way sync). Then let the app do its work.

The interface is similar to the desktop PC version, so will feel instantly familiar. The only major drawback of the Android version is that you can't sync between Android devices - this is promised in a future update. Nevertheless, this is by far the best mobile version of Laplink Sync currently available.