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Finally, for free advice about your setup, just leave a message in the comments below here at NASCompares.com and we will get back to you.

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If you like this service, please consider supporting us. We use affiliate links on the blog allowing NAScompares information and advice service to be free of charge to you.Anything you purchase on the day you click on our links will generate a small commission which isused to run the website. Here is a link for Amazon and B&H.You can also get me a

Ko-fi or old school Paypal. Thanks!To find out more about how to support this advice service check HEREIf you need to fix or configure a NAS, check Fiver Have you thought about helping others with your knowledge? Find Instructions Here

Or support us by using our affiliate links on Amazon UK and Amazon US

Alternatively, why not ask me on the ASK NASCompares forum, by clicking the button below. This is a community hub that serves as a place that I can answer your question, chew the fat, share new release information and even get corrections posted. I will always get around to answering ALL queries, but as a one-man operation, I cannot promise speed! So by sharing your query in the ASK NASCompares section below, you can get a better range of solutions and suggestions, alongside my own.

NAS Compares
ZimaCube 2 Design Update + Q&A with the Zima Founder
6 avril 2026 à 18:00

ZimaCube 2 Design Update + Q&A with the Zima Founder

NAS Compares

Par : Rob Andrews

6 avril 2026 à 18:00

Update on the ZimaCube 2 NAS + Your Questions Answered

Following the original ZimaCube and ZimaCube Pro, IceWhale is now preparing the ZimaCube 2 range as a more mature follow-up to its first desktop NAS platform, combining the same broad idea of a compact, open, software-defined personal cloud with clearer attention paid to refinement, validation, and retail readiness. Based on the specifications revealed so far, the standard $799 ZimaCube 2, the $1,299 ZimaCube 2 Pro, and the $2,499 Creator Pack continue to target users who want a turnkey system that still leaves room for alternative operating systems, PCIe expansion, direct Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 connectivity, and mixed storage workloads, but the second generation also arrives in the shadow of the first model’s early issues around cooling, power handling, and hardware compatibility, all of which IceWhale now says informed the redesign. Rather than presenting the ZimaCube 2 as a radically different product category, the company appears to be positioning it as a more stable and better validated version of the same formula, with a stronger base model, revised cooling, closer hardware and software integration, and a retail launch path instead of another crowdfunding campaign.

Remember to use the NASCompares Channel Discount Code: ‘NASCOMPARES50’

Zimacube 2 First Look at the Design

In physical terms, the ZimaCube 2 remains very close to the original system. The listed chassis dimensions are still 240 x 221 x 220 mm, and the overall layout continues to center on a compact desktop enclosure with 6 front-facing drive bays, a removable front panel, and a secondary internal sled for the 7th-bay M.2 storage section. That means this is not a major departure in footprint or format, but rather a continuation of the same small-tower NAS concept that IceWhale introduced with the first ZimaCube generation.

The external build also keeps the same broad industrial approach, with an all-metal enclosure and a design that is intended to be visible on a desk rather than hidden away. Based on the Shenzhen hands-on material, the finish has been revised to a silver tone rather than the darker look associated with earlier models, and there are still decorative touches such as copper-coloured screws and RGB lighting. The magnetic front cover also remains part of the design language, although the hands-on notes suggest that removability is still not especially refined, with no obvious front handle to make access easier.

Internally, the most significant design revision appears to be in thermals rather than structure. The original ZimaCube family drew recurring criticism over cooling behaviour and fan noise, and IceWhale itself later issued optimisation guidance and revised cooling components for early units. On the ZimaCube 2, the cooling assembly appears to have been reworked substantially, with a much larger vapor-chamber style module, extended heatpipe routing, and a direct airflow path toward a rear-mounted fan. In practical terms, this is one of the clearest visible signs that the company is treating thermal control as a first-order design issue rather than a secondary adjustment.

The storage layout remains one of the most recognisable elements of the platform. At the front are 6 SATA bays for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives, while the separate 7th-bay board carries 4 M.2 slots. What has changed is the clarification around performance tiers. Following the post-video corrections, both the standard and Pro use PCIe Gen 4 for the 7th-bay architecture, but the actual throughput differs because of the ASMedia bridge hardware: the standard model is rated for 800MB/s R/W, while the Pro and Creator Pack are rated for 3200MB/s R/W. So although the physical design remains familiar, the storage subsystem is now segmented more clearly by model.

Taken together, the ZimaCube 2’s design changes are best understood as a revision rather than a clean-sheet rethink. The enclosure, bay structure, general scale, and visual concept are all recognisably derived from the earlier ZimaCube, but the thermal hardware, finish, and some of the internal implementation details suggest a product that has been adjusted in response to first-generation feedback. From a design perspective, the main story is not reinvention. It is that IceWhale appears to have revisited the same chassis idea with greater emphasis on cooling headroom, validation, and long-term use as a retail product rather than a first-wave crowdfunded device.

Zimacube 2 Internal Hardware Confirmation

The internal hardware changes are more substantial than the exterior suggests, particularly at the lower end of the range. The standard ZimaCube 2 now moves from the original ZimaCube’s Intel N100 to a 12th Gen Intel Core i3-1215U, giving the base model 6 cores, 8 threads, and a much stronger starting point for mixed storage and application workloads.

The ZimaCube 2 Pro and Creator Pack both use the 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U with 10 cores and 12 threads, which keeps the Pro class in the same broad processor tier as the earlier ZimaCube Pro, but still gives the second-generation lineup a more balanced split between entry and higher-tier models. Memory has also shifted upward in platform terms, with DDR5 SODIMM support and upgradeable slots rather than fixed memory, allowing the standard model to start at 8GB, the Pro at 16GB, and the Creator Pack at 64GB.

One of the more important details here is that IceWhale is not presenting the hardware purely as a NAS board with attached storage, but as a compact compute platform that also happens to handle large-scale local storage. The system still uses an internal NVMe SSD for the operating system, with 256GB on the standard and Pro and 1TB on the Creator Pack, while retaining dual PCIe slots on a Mini-ITX based custom board. That means the core platform is still built around expandability, and not just in a theoretical sense. IceWhale continues to point toward GPU cards, AI accelerators, network cards, and SSD-focused upgrades as intended use cases, which places the ZimaCube 2 somewhere between a traditional NAS, a compact home server, and a turnkey prosumer workstation-style storage appliance.

At the same time, the scale of the internal upgrade depends on which earlier model is being used as the reference point. Against the original non-Pro ZimaCube, the jump is obvious: newer CPU class, higher memory ceiling, improved internal segmentation, and a platform that appears better prepared for virtualization, media handling, and direct-attached workloads. Against the original ZimaCube Pro, however, the advance is more limited, because the Pro remains on the same Core i5-1235U family and much of the underlying capability was already present in some form. So while the internal hardware is clearly stronger overall, especially in the standard model, this still reads more as a focused revision of the existing architecture than a complete hardware reset.

Zimacube 2 Final Ports and Connectivity

Externally, the ZimaCube 2 continues to position itself as something broader than a conventional NAS, and the port layout reflects that. On the rear, the standard model includes 2 x 2.5GbE network ports alongside 2 x Thunderbolt 4 or USB4-capable USB-C connections, which gives it both networked and direct-attached workflow options. That matters because IceWhale is still treating direct host connection as one of the platform’s defining features, particularly for users who want local high-speed access without routing everything through standard Ethernet alone. It also keeps the ZimaCube 2 distinct from many turnkey NAS systems that rely almost entirely on network connectivity as the primary access path.

The separation between the standard and Pro models is more visible in networking than in external appearance. The standard ZimaCube 2 is limited to 2 x 2.5GbE, while the ZimaCube 2 Pro adds an additional 10GbE port. That makes the Pro the more complete option for users intending to deploy the system as shared high-speed network storage, while the standard model leans more heavily on its direct-connect Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 story to offset the absence of 10GbE. In practical terms, this is an important distinction, because although both systems look closely related on paper, the network capabilities create a clear difference in how they are likely to be used in creative or multi-user environments.

The rest of the I/O remains relatively conventional but still useful for a system of this class. IceWhale lists 4 x USB-A 3.0 ports, 1 x USB-C 3.0 port, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, and a 3.5mm audio jack, while the internal platform also keeps 2 PCIe expansion slots available for broader configuration. None of these ports alone are unusual, but taken together they reinforce the same point as the rest of the hardware: this is not being framed as a sealed appliance. It is being framed as a turnkey system with room for local expansion, direct attachment, and mixed workload deployment, even if the actual value of that depends on whether the buyer is choosing the standard model’s lower-cost balance or the Pro model’s more complete network specification.

Next, I spent some time with the founder of Icewhale (the company behind the Zimacube and ZimaOS, as well as the popular Zimaboard and Zimablade) and put forward a few questions about the current development of Zimacube 2 and their recent pricing changes to ZimaOS.

What is the ZimaCube 2 bringing to the market that your previous ZimaCube/ZimaCube Pro does not?

Based on the hands-on session and Lauren Pan’s comments, IceWhale is not presenting the ZimaCube 2 as a completely new product category, but rather as a more refined and better balanced version of the same idea. The biggest practical difference is that the standard model is no longer a clearly compromised entry point in the way the original N100-based ZimaCube often appeared next to the first Pro. The move to a Core i3-1215U, DDR5 memory, dual Thunderbolt 4 or USB4, 6 SATA bays, 4 M.2 slots, 2 PCIe slots, and upgradeable SODIMM memory means the base model now looks much closer to the wider prosumer NAS and compact server market, instead of acting mainly as the cheaper route into the ecosystem. That gives the range a stronger starting point and makes the standard unit a more serious option in its own right.

The second major difference is maturity rather than raw specification. IceWhale is tying the ZimaCube 2 more directly to the lessons learned from the first generation, especially around cooling, stability, hardware validation, and closer coordination between hardware and software development. The revised thermal module, the stronger emphasis on compatibility testing, the claim of more OS-level control over system parameters such as fans, and the move away from crowdfunding toward direct retail all suggest that the ZimaCube 2 is intended to arrive as a more settled product. So while the overall concept remains familiar, what IceWhale appears to be bringing to market this time is a more fully developed turnkey platform, not just in hardware terms, but in how the product is being prepared, sold, and supported.

What lessons were learnt in the development of the original ZimaCube that are going to be applied in the development of ZimaCube 2?

The clearest lesson appears to have been that the original ZimaCube needed tighter coordination between hardware and software from the outset. According to Lauren Pan, one of the main internal changes for the second generation is that both teams now work far more closely together, discussing hardware and software details in the same development cycle rather than treating them as separate tracks. In practical terms, that matters because the first-generation platform showed that a NAS or personal cloud product is not defined by hardware alone. It also depends heavily on how well thermals, fan control, storage behaviour, connectivity, and OS-level management are integrated into a single system.

A second lesson concerns validation and first-batch readiness. The original ZimaCube attracted feedback around cooling, fan behaviour, drive compatibility, and power-related issues, and IceWhale now appears to be treating those areas much more seriously in the ZimaCube 2. Pan specifically pointed to a redesigned thermal module, more extensive compatibility testing, and additional work with drive manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital after earlier issues emerged. The broader implication is that ZimaCube 2 is being developed less like an experimental first-generation product and more like a revision intended to reduce the kind of early hardware and integration problems that affected the first release.

What was the biggest challenge that you have faced in the development of ZimaCube 2?

According to Lauren Pan, the biggest challenge in developing the ZimaCube 2 was production cost. That answer fits the wider context of the current hardware market, where CPU, memory, SSD, and other component pricing has remained a significant pressure on system builders. In the case of the ZimaCube 2, IceWhale appears to have been trying to hold onto several features that are often reduced or removed in competing products at this price level, including upgradeable SODIMM memory, bundled system storage, dual Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 connectivity, PCIe expansion, and a more substantial cooling solution. So the challenge was not simply making a new box, but doing so while keeping the product within a price band that still looked competitive against other turnkey and semi-DIY NAS systems in 2026.

That issue appears especially relevant to the standard model. IceWhale is trying to position the $799 ZimaCube 2 as a stronger base platform than the original non-Pro unit, while still including a Core i3-1215U, 8GB of DDR5, 256GB of NVMe storage, 6 SATA bays, 4 M.2 slots, and full ZimaOS licensing as part of the package. In that respect, the development challenge seems to have been balancing specification, manufacturability, and margin without moving the product out of reach of the same buyers it is trying to attract. The result is that cost control appears to have shaped not just pricing, but also the way IceWhale talks about the ZimaCube 2 as a price versus performance compromise rather than an attempt to maximise specifications at any cost.

What has the user response been to your switch towards a free/paid $29 model of your ZimaOS software since the announcement?

According to Lauren Pan, the response to the move from a fully free model to the current free tier plus $29 lifetime ZimaOS+ model has been mixed, but not unexpected. Some community members were confused by the change or felt the software should have remained fully free, while others accepted that the platform needed a sustainable business model if development was going to continue over the long term.

That split is fairly typical for software that begins as a no-cost offering and later introduces paid licensing, particularly when it has built much of its reputation through community use, testing, and feedback. In IceWhale’s case, the company’s position is that the low-cost lifetime fee is intended to make the software commercially sustainable without undermining its accessibility.

IceWhale has also tried to frame the pricing change as part of a broader community model rather than just a revenue switch. Pan said the company had explained the reasoning publicly in late 2025 and described a plan under which 33% of license revenue would be directed back toward community contributors, including moderators, app maintainers, and users helping support the wider ZimaOS and CasaOS ecosystem.

Whether that model proves sustainable over time remains to be seen, but the immediate point is that IceWhale does not appear to be treating the $29 fee as a traditional software upsell. Instead, it is presenting it as a low-cost, lifetime contribution intended to keep development active while maintaining a relatively low barrier to entry compared with other paid NAS software platforms.

Will ZimaCube 2 be headed for crowdfunding, or direct to traditional retail?

IceWhale says the ZimaCube 2 is going direct to traditional retail rather than returning to crowdfunding. In Lauren Pan’s explanation, Kickstarter is something the company now sees as useful in 2 specific cases: either when a product concept still needs market validation, or when production costs are high enough that outside funding is needed to get the first batch built. IceWhale’s position is that the original ZimaCube fit that earlier stage of the company, when the product was more expensive to bring to market and the business itself was still proving demand for this kind of home server and personal cloud hardware. With the ZimaCube 2, the company appears to believe it no longer needs crowdfunding for either of those reasons.

That change is also part of the wider message around the second generation. Moving straight to store-based pre-orders gives the impression that IceWhale wants the ZimaCube 2 to be seen less as an experimental or community-funded device and more as a normal retail product. Pan also described the early response as active, with roughly 200 to 300 community applications tied to testing and usage scenarios, suggesting that demand discovery is now happening around a product that already exists, rather than one still needing crowdfunding to justify its creation. In practical terms, the retail-first approach supports IceWhale’s broader attempt to position the ZimaCube 2 as a more mature follow-up to the first generation.

The NASCompares Conclusion and Verdict so Far on ZimaCube 2

Taken as a whole, the ZimaCube 2 looks less like a dramatic reinvention of the original platform and more like a deliberate correction and refinement of it. The overall chassis concept, storage layout, and broader product identity remain familiar, but IceWhale appears to have focused this second generation on the areas that mattered most after the first release: a stronger base model, revised thermals, closer hardware and software coordination, more validation around compatibility, and a direct retail launch rather than another crowdfunding cycle. That means the scale of change is uneven depending on which earlier model it is compared against, but the direction is clear enough. The ZimaCube 2 does not appear to be trying to replace the original with a wholly different vision. Instead, it looks like IceWhale is trying to turn the ZimaCube formula into a more complete and commercially mature turnkey platform, with ZimaOS, direct Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 connectivity, PCIe expansion, and hybrid storage still forming the core of its appeal.

Remember to use the NASCompares Channel Discount Code: ‘NASCOMPARES50’

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Need Advice on Data Storage from an Expert?

Finally, for free advice about your setup, just leave a message in the comments below here at NASCompares.com and we will get back to you.

Need Help? Where possible (and where appropriate) please provide as much information about your requirements, as then I can arrange the best answer and solution to your needs. Do not worry about your e-mail address being required, it will NOT be used in a mailing list and will NOT be used in any way other than to respond to your enquiry. [contact-form-7]

If you like this service, please consider supporting us. We use affiliate links on the blog allowing NAScompares information and advice service to be free of charge to you.Anything you purchase on the day you click on our links will generate a small commission which isused to run the website. Here is a link for Amazon and B&H.You can also get me a

Ko-fi or old school Paypal. Thanks!To find out more about how to support this advice service check HEREIf you need to fix or configure a NAS, check Fiver Have you thought about helping others with your knowledge? Find Instructions Here

Or support us by using our affiliate links on Amazon UK and Amazon US

Alternatively, why not ask me on the ASK NASCompares forum, by clicking the button below. This is a community hub that serves as a place that I can answer your question, chew the fat, share new release information and even get corrections posted. I will always get around to answering ALL queries, but as a one-man operation, I cannot promise speed! So by sharing your query in the ASK NASCompares section below, you can get a better range of solutions and suggestions, alongside my own.

NAS Compares
100 Reasons Why Users Choose TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox, OMV or ZimaOS over Synology QNAP, Terramaster and More
28 mars 2026 à 00:00

100 Reasons Why Users Choose TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox, OMV or ZimaOS over Synology QNAP, Terramaster and More

NAS Compares

Par : Rob Andrews

28 mars 2026 à 00:00

100 Reasons DIY NAS (TrueNAS, UnRAID, Proxmox) are BETTER than Turnkey (Synology/QNAP/etc)

Plenty of people who start with Synology, QNAP or other turnkey NAS boxes will quietly admit that they keep hearing the siren call of DIY platforms like TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox, OpenMediaVault and ZimaOS. They see the videos, the benchmarks and the insane builds that squeeze every last drop out of consumer and ex-enterprise hardware. No one is pretending that turnkey systems are not convenient or polished, but more and more users are realising that the raw control, scalability and flexibility you get from rolling your own NAS can be worth the extra effort. In 2025 it is easier than ever to grab a used server, a pile of drives and a USB stick and end up with something that outperforms many branded appliances, both in speed and long term value. So, below are 100 reasons why users decide to jump ship from the safe, curated and sometimes expensive world of turnkey NAS, and instead join the more open, powerful and endlessly customisable world of DIY storage. Some points are very homelab focused, others are about cost and longevity, and some are specific to individual platforms such as TrueNAS ZFS, Unraid parity arrays or Proxmox clustering.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER – Different tools suit different tasks! I use both DIY and Turnkey Solutions in my own personal/work data storage environments (as well as a little bit of DAS and even some off site cloud!),. This article is not designed to ‘attack’ or ‘slag off’ one side of the home server market over another! It is to help understand why users might choose one over the other. Not disimilar in some ways to how some people prefer PC gaming vs Console gaming (or even exclusively mobile, though even struggle to wrap my head around that one!).

1. Full control over your hardware

With TrueNAS, Unraid, ZimaOS, Proxmox or OMV you choose everything yourself, from CPU and RAM to motherboard, HBA, NIC, case and power supply. You are not restricted to a small list of approved chassis and expansion units, so you can build around quiet small form factor systems, big tower rigs, or used rack servers depending on your needs and budget.

2. No vendor lock on drives

DIY NAS platforms let you use almost any SATA or SAS drive you like, including shucked external drives and mixed brands. There are no vendor media lists, no compatibility warnings that nag you for using third party disks, and no artificial limits that push you toward expensive branded drives.

3. Advanced file system features

TrueNAS and some other DIY platforms give you direct access to ZFS features such as copy on write integrity, end to end checksums, compression, snapshots, clones and send or receive replication. You can design datasets and snapshot schedules exactly as you want rather than relying on simplified abstractions.

4. Flexible storage layouts and mixed disk sizes

Unraid and ZFS based DIY stacks allow non traditional layouts, with mixed disk sizes, parity only arrays, mirror vdevs, striped vdevs and multiple pools. You can start small and grow over time without following the fixed bay patterns or limited RAID options of many turnkey systems.

5. Deep performance tuning

DIY NAS operating systems usually expose more dials for memory usage, cache behaviour, record sizes, sync policy, queue depths and network stack tuning. Power users can squeeze more throughput or lower latency from the same hardware by testing and adjusting these settings, something appliance firmware often hides.

6. Multi role server in one box

A DIY NAS can be more than just storage. With Proxmox, Unraid, ZimaOS or OMV plus a hypervisor you can run VMs, containers, network services and lab workloads on the same system. This suits homelab users who want their storage server to double as a general purpose compute node.

7. Better use of high end or unusual components

If you invest in many core CPUs, large amounts of RAM, enterprise NVMe or special purpose HBAs, DIY platforms can take full advantage of them. You are not limited by a turnkey vendor firmware that assumes mid range hardware and sometimes underuses powerful components.

8. Lower cost at large scale

Once you move beyond a handful of bays, appliance NAS pricing climbs quickly. Building a DIY NAS with commodity parts or refurbished enterprise gear often gives you a much lower cost per bay and a cheaper upgrade path over five to ten years, especially for media servers and backup targets.

9. Reuse of existing hardware

Many people already have a spare gaming PC, workstation or decommissioned server. DIY NAS software lets you repurpose that hardware rather than buying a completely new appliance. You can then gradually replace parts over time without throwing the whole system away.

10. Independence from vendor roadmaps

With TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox or OMV you are not tied to one company product line or release schedule. If a vendor drops a feature, changes licensing, or stops making a class of device, your DIY stack keeps going and you can add or swap components as you see fit.

11. Open source transparency and auditability

Many DIY NAS platforms are open source or based on open distributions. You can inspect the code, follow public issue trackers, and see exactly how data path and management components behave. For organisations with strong security requirements this transparency can be more attractive than opaque appliance firmware.

12. Rich community plugin and container ecosystem

TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox and OMV all have active communities that publish templates, stacks and guides for a huge range of self hosted services. New applications usually appear first as containers or community charts, so you can experiment with cutting edge projects long before they arrive in any vendor app store.

13. Clean integration with existing homelab tools

If you already use tools such as Ansible, Terraform, Salt, Proxmox clusters, or Kubernetes, a DIY NAS fits into that world more naturally. It behaves like another Linux or BSD server, so you can reuse automation, monitoring, and configuration patterns that you already trust.

14. Freedom from feature based licensing

DIY platforms generally do not charge extra for adding more cameras, shares, users or applications. If your hardware can handle twenty containers or twenty camera streams, you can run them without buying more licences. That is very different from some turnkey systems where extra features are tightly controlled.

15. Strong privacy control and no enforced cloud accounts

TrueNAS, Unraid, ZimaOS, Proxmox and OMV can all run fully local with no requirement to create cloud accounts or sign in to a vendor portal. You choose if you want remote access and which VPN or reverse proxy you trust, so it is easier to keep storage isolated from external services.

16. Powerful scripting and automation options

Because DIY NAS software sits on standard Linux or BSD layers, you can use cron, systemd timers, full shell scripting and language runtimes such as Python or Go. Backup pipelines, integrity checks, archiving rules and housekeeping tasks can be scripted exactly as you need them.

17. Better fit for larger and denser builds

If you want twenty four, thirty six or more bays, DIY approaches scale more smoothly. You can use dedicated JBOD shelves, fibre or SAS expanders, and multiple HBAs, with TrueNAS or Proxmox managing pools across them. Many consumer appliances run out of official options long before that point.

18. Easier experimentation with new technologies

DIY platforms are ideal for lab work with new storage ideas, for example experimental ZFS features, new compression algorithms, alternative filesystems or clustered storage layers such as Ceph and Gluster. You can try these on real hardware without waiting for a turnkey vendor to embrace them.

19. Ability to virtualise the NAS itself

A DIY NAS stack can sit inside a virtual machine on top of Proxmox, VMware or another hypervisor. That makes it easier to move the entire storage system between hosts, snapshot the system disk, test upgrades in clones, or run multiple separate NAS instances on the same physical hardware.

21. Alignment with strict open source or compliance policies

Some companies and institutions prefer or require that core infrastructure runs on software with open licensing and source availability. DIY NAS stacks based on standard Linux or BSD distributions make it easier to satisfy those policies than closed vendor operating systems.

22. Efficient use of decommissioned enterprise hardware

The secondary market is full of cheap rack servers, HBAs and SAS shelves that are no longer wanted in data centres but are perfect for home or small business storage. TrueNAS, Proxmox and OMV can run happily on this hardware and give you enterprise level resilience for a fraction of the original cost.

23. Custom network roles on the same machine

A DIY NAS can also act as router, firewall, VPN concentrator or reverse proxy if you want to consolidate equipment. Proxmox or Unraid can host a firewall VM, DNS resolver and other network tools right next to your storage, which is not how most turnkey NAS devices are designed to be used.

24. Fine grained control of encryption and keys

DIY platforms usually let you decide exactly how encryption is applied, how keys are stored, how passphrases are entered and how this interacts with snapshots and replication. You can integrate with external key managers or strict manual processes rather than using a one size fits all wizard.

25. Easier avoidance of telemetry and phone home behaviour

If you want a storage stack that never connects to any remote service unless you deliberately configure it, DIY software is easier to keep quiet. You can review services, outgoing connections and packages yourself, instead of relying on a vendor to document what their appliance firmware does.

26. Flexible data retention and tiering schemes

Because you control the hierarchy of datasets, shares and pools, you can implement very detailed retention rules and archiving flows. Cold data can move to slower and cheaper disks, hot data can live on SSD pools, and you can enforce lifecycles with your own scripts instead of fixed vendor policies.

27. Shared skillset across storage and compute

When your storage servers and application servers all run similar bases, for example Debian or FreeBSD, the same administration knowledge applies everywhere. Teams do not need to learn a unique vendor interface for one box and a completely different approach for the rest of the estate.

28. Support for niche and emerging services

DIY NAS ecosystems often adopt new projects quickly, whether that is a young media server, a fresh photo tool, or an unusual database. Community templates for Unraid or Proxmox arrive much faster than official packages on proprietary platforms, so you can explore niche services early.

29. Long term reuse of hardware for other roles

If your storage needs change, a DIY NAS box can become a general server, a lab hypervisor or a test bench machine simply by reinstalling or repurposing the disks. You are not stuck with a chassis that only really makes sense as a proprietary NAS.

30. Lean installations without extra bloat

DIY stacks can be installed in a minimal way with only the services you actually need. There is no requirement to run vendor photo portals, cloud connectors or bundled office tools if you do not want them, which keeps resource use low and reduces the attack surface.

31. Granular control over updates and versions

DIY NAS platforms usually let you decide exactly when to update the core system, plugins and containers. You can hold a known good version for months, run a newer kernel only on a test VM, or pin specific containers while the rest of the stack moves forward, instead of accepting a single vendor update cadence across everything.

32. Ability to run several NAS platforms on one machine

With Proxmox or similar hypervisors you can run TrueNAS in one VM, Unraid in another and maybe a plain Linux storage stack beside them, all on the same hardware. This lets you compare platforms, migrate gradually or dedicate different virtual NAS instances to different clients without buying multiple appliances.

33. Deep visibility for troubleshooting and performance analysis

DIY systems expose full system logs, kernel messages, packet captures and low level profiling tools. When you hit a strange performance issue or network glitch you can drill right down into iostat, tcpdump or perf, rather than relying only on a high level vendor dashboard that may not reveal the root cause.

34. Configuration managed like code in Git

Because most DIY NAS configurations live in text or structured files, you can store them in Git, review changes, roll back to older commits and clone the same setup onto another node. This aligns your storage servers with modern configuration management practices instead of keeping all changes on a single vendor GUI.

35. Option to extend or maintain abandoned components

If a plugin, driver or feature you rely on is dropped by its original maintainer, an open DIY stack at least gives you the option to fork and maintain it or hire someone to do so. With a closed appliance firmware, once the vendor removes or changes a feature you generally have no way to bring it back.

36. Freedom to fully rebrand or white label

Service providers that build solutions for clients can install TrueNAS, Proxmox or OMV on standard hardware and theme the interfaces, hostnames and portals to match their own brand. There is no prominent third party logo on the front of the GUI, which is often preferable when you are selling a complete solution.

37. Direct choice of monitoring and alerting stack

DIY NAS servers can run native agents for Prometheus, Zabbix, Checkmk, commercial monitoring suites and whatever log pipeline you already use. You do not have to rely on a vendor specific cloud portal or proprietary alert format, so storage monitoring fits seamlessly into the rest of your infrastructure.

38. Support for unusual hardware form factors

Because you can install DIY NAS software on almost anything that runs a suitable kernel, it is easier to use very compact systems, blade servers, dense JBOD trays or custom builds that no turnkey NAS vendor offers. This flexibility is valuable when you have physical constraints or leftover hardware that does not match appliance shapes.

39. Full control over repositories and software sources

On a DIY stack you decide which package repositories are trusted, whether you mirror them locally and which versions are allowed. This is useful in secure environments that need all software to come from internal mirrors and want to block any unapproved external package feeds.

40. Faster access to new kernel and protocol features

New SMB or NFS versions, fresh filesystems, driver updates and network features typically land on general purpose Linux or BSD first. DIY platforms that stay close to upstream can adopt these improvements long before a NAS vendor ships them in a future firmware for a specific appliance.

41. Stronger learning value and career skills

Running TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox or OMV teaches real storage, networking and operating system concepts. Many homelab users treat their DIY NAS as a training ground, and the knowledge they gain with ZFS, KVM, Docker and Linux often translates directly into professional roles in IT and DevOps.

42. Better use of GPUs and accelerators

DIY NAS systems can use almost any supported GPU or accelerator card for tasks such as Plex transcoding, AI workloads, video processing or scientific computing. You can pass devices through to VMs or containers and tune them as you like, instead of being restricted to a short list of vendor approved cards.

43. True multi tenant storage on a single chassis

With Proxmox or other hypervisors you can run several separate NAS VMs for different customers or departments on one physical box, each with its own web UI, users and policies. This multi tenant approach is attractive for managed service providers and is harder to implement cleanly on a single turnkey NAS.

44. Custom identity and multifactor authentication integration

DIY NAS environments can tie directly into whatever identity stack you prefer, from simple LDAP through to complex single sign on with custom multifactor rules. You can adopt advanced access controls or experiment with new identity providers without waiting for a NAS vendor to support them.

45. Alignment with strict internal security tooling

Organisations that already use SELinux, AppArmor, central audit frameworks or host based intrusion detection can apply the same policies to DIY storage nodes. A TrueNAS or Proxmox box that runs on a standard distribution can join existing security baselines, which is much harder with proprietary NAS firmware.

46. Support for exotic and high performance networking

DIY NAS stacks can use specialist network cards such as Infiniband, RoCE capable adapters or unusual fibre interfaces as long as the drivers exist. This allows you to experiment with very high throughput or low latency technologies that are rarely supported on commodity appliance NAS hardware.

47. Custom backup and replication pipelines

With tools like ZFS send and receive, rclone, Restic or Borg you can build very specific backup and replication flows. You can script encryption, throttling, snapshot selection and multiple targets in a way that fits your environment instead of being limited to the fixed policies of one vendor backup tool.

48. Colocation friendly and data center ready

DIY NAS builds can follow data center norms such as using standard rack servers, redundant power supplies, remote management controllers and IPv6 heavy networks. Colocation providers expect this type of hardware, and DIY software lets your storage blend into a standard server fleet rather than being an odd office appliance.

49. Fine grained admin delegation at operating system level

On a DIY NAS you can use normal user, group and sudo rules with SSH keys to control who can run which commands. One person can manage pools, another can manage virtual machines, another can handle monitoring agents, all with precise restrictions that go beyond the coarse admin or user split of many appliances.

50. Integration with dynamic energy and solar setups

Because DIY NAS software can talk to external APIs and home automation systems, you can schedule heavy tasks such as scrubs, backups or transcoding to run when solar output is high or electricity tariffs are low. This kind of energy aware behaviour is difficult to achieve with fixed vendor power schedules.

51. Deep home automation and MQTT integration

DIY storage nodes can publish events into MQTT, Node Red or Home Assistant whenever backups finish, disks fail or space runs low, and can also respond to automation signals from the rest of the house. This lets your NAS participate in a wider automation fabric rather than living as an isolated appliance.

52. Use of enterprise secrets management for keys and passwords

DIY NAS servers can fetch encryption keys, passwords and API tokens from systems such as HashiCorp Vault or other corporate secret stores. That allows central management and rotation of sensitive data instead of keeping secrets inside a proprietary NAS configuration database.

53. Network boot and golden image strategies

You can build a standard disk image or network boot environment for your DIY NAS with all tooling and configuration baked in. If the system disk fails or you want to spin up a second node, you simply redeploy the image and reattach the existing storage pools, which is a very different model from appliance firmware.

54. Validation of changes through continuous integration

When configuration lives in files managed in Git, you can run linting and simulation jobs in a CI pipeline before applying changes to your DIY NAS servers. This allows you to catch syntax errors or bad parameters automatically, which is impossible when all edits happen only through a click driven vendor interface.

55. Custom user interfaces and portals on top of APIs

DIY stacks expose command line tools and often REST APIs that allow you to build your own lightweight dashboards for particular users or teams. You can present a simplified view for media editors, a different one for backup operators, and keep the full complexity of the base system hidden in the background.

56. Tailored localisation and language choices

If the default language or terminology of the platform does not suit your users, you can adjust translation files or web templates on a DIY system. Community contributions in minority languages are also easier to ship and maintain than on a closed vendor NAS where only official translations exist.

57. Customised drive qualification and burn in workflows

You can design a strict process for testing new disks, for example running multi day read and write passes, specific SMART tests and temperature checks before a drive ever joins a pool. Scripts and reports can enforce this burn in policy across all your DIY NAS nodes, something turnkey platforms rarely expose in detail.

58. Robust behaviour in extreme or niche environments

In vehicles, ships, remote cabins or unstable power conditions you may need unusual behaviours such as aggressive throttling at certain temperatures, logging to serial consoles or special shutdown routines. DIY software gives you the hooks to script and tune these reactions in ways that appliance firmware does not anticipate.

59. Clean integration with formal change management processes

Organisations with strict change control can insist that all NAS configuration changes arrive through reviewed pull requests and automated deployment tools. A DIY NAS whose configuration is driven by code fits smoothly into this world, whereas an appliance managed only through a browser is harder to audit and control.

60. Easy experimentation with clustered storage technologies

If you want to explore scale out storage such as Ceph, Gluster or other distributed systems, DIY hardware and open platforms are the most practical route. You can repurpose existing nodes into a cluster, test resilience and performance characteristics, and later reuse those machines for other lab work if requirements change.

61. Easier long term data salvage and portability

With DIY platforms such as TrueNAS, Unraid, ZimaOS, Proxmox and OMV, the on disk formats and pool layouts are widely documented and used in many contexts. If a motherboard dies in several years, you can move the disks to new hardware, reinstall the same software and import the pools, instead of hunting for an identical appliance or vendor recovery tool.

62. Broader protocol support and deeper tuning

DIY NAS software lets you expose storage over SMB, NFS, iSCSI, rsync modules, sometimes NVMe over TCP and more, with detailed control of versions, encryption, timeouts and caching. You can tune each protocol for a specific workload instead of accepting whatever subset and presets a turnkey vendor offers.

63. Custom hooks on file and dataset operations

Because you control the base system, you can attach your own scripts when files are written, moved or deleted in particular locations. That allows automatic virus scanning, metadata extraction, indexing, transcoding or business workflows that trigger whenever content changes, rather than relying only on built in features.

64. Comfortable operation with serial console and no local screen

DIY NAS platforms are happy on machines that have only serial console or out of band management with no HDMI or local keyboard. This matches how many server rooms and colocation racks actually work and lets you manage storage over low bandwidth links without any graphical tools if needed.

65. More compression and deduplication options per dataset

ZFS based DIY systems allow you to choose different compression algorithms and record sizes per dataset and to enable or disable deduplication only where it makes sense. You can optimise for databases, media archives or virtual machines individually rather than living with a single vendor setting for an entire volume.

66. Clear separation of storage and management planes

On a DIY NAS you can keep the storage node lean and run most of the management logic on other servers through SSH, APIs or orchestration tools. The storage device can behave as a focused data plane while the control plane lives elsewhere, which is attractive in environments that want very thin appliances.

67. Community culture that embraces experimentation

The forums and communities around TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox and OMV are full of people who enjoy deep technical dives, benchmarks and off label use cases. For homelab users and engineers that culture can feel more welcoming than vendor moderated communities that discourage unsupported combinations.

68. Reuse of one reference design across home, lab and office

Once you settle on a particular DIY stack and layout, you can repeat the same design at home, at work and in test environments with only minor changes. Automation scripts, monitoring templates and backup strategies can be shared almost unchanged between all these machines.

69. Neutral target for testing third party backup strategies

A DIY NAS can act as a neutral storage target for many different backup products and appliances from other vendors. You can point various commercial systems at the same TrueNAS or Proxmox storage, then compare how they behave for restore, versioning and verification, something that is harder when your main storage is itself a fixed vendor appliance.

70. No hard limits on shares, datasets or exports

DIY platforms rarely impose artificial limits on the number of datasets, snapshots, exports or shares you can create. As long as the underlying system can handle it, you can build very granular layouts for different teams, applications and projects without hitting a model based cap.

71. Better fit for reproducible research environments

In academic or scientific work, it is often important that another team can rebuild the same stack years later. A DIY NAS with configuration stored in code and based on standard distributions can be recreated on any suitable hardware, which supports reproducible experiments and shared lab setups.

72. Combination of storage and high performance computing

In some labs and studios the same physical machines are used both for heavy compute work and for fast local storage. DIY NAS software can happily coexist with HPC toolchains and schedulers on the same hardware, allowing you to run compute workloads close to the data without separate appliances.

73. Precise control of time and clock integration

DIY platforms give full access to NTP, Precision Time Protocol and kernel timing controls. For environments where consistent timing is critical, such as finance, measurement systems or some industrial setups, the storage node can participate in the same strict time hierarchy as the rest of the infrastructure.

74. Better support for unusual backup and archival devices

If you need to attach tape libraries, optical jukeboxes or rare archival devices, a DIY NAS running a general purpose operating system is more likely to support them. You can install the required drivers and tools for these devices rather than waiting for a turnkey vendor to recognise them.

75. Ideal for storage that is a pure backend service

Some administrators want their storage nodes to be invisible to end users and to present only block or file protocols to other systems. DIY NAS installations can be trimmed down to offer only SMB, NFS, iSCSI or object storage with no media portals or user apps, which suits this backend only role very well.

76. Flexible data transformation and ingestion pipelines

Because you can run whatever tools and containers you like, a DIY NAS can also host data transformation jobs. For example, you can receive raw data, clean it, compress it, encrypt it and then push it to cloud storage or another site, all driven by your own scripts and schedules.

77. Reduced reliance on any single vendor decision

With DIY platforms you are not waiting for one company to decide which media codecs, hardware accelerators or remote access features are allowed. If a particular vendor chooses a direction you dislike, you can still adopt the tools and configurations that suit you within your own stack.

78. No forced hardware replacement at support end dates

When a commercial NAS model reaches the vendor end of support, users are often encouraged to buy a new box even if the hardware is still reliable. With DIY storage you can keep updating the operating system on the same machine for as long as the components remain healthy, decoupling software support from hardware marketing cycles.

79. Good fit for very lean remote management

In remote or bandwidth constrained locations, being able to manage the NAS entirely with text tools and small configuration files is valuable. DIY platforms let you perform upgrades, configuration changes and even troubleshooting over slow links without relying on heavy web interfaces.

80. Custom quality of service tied to processes and containers

On DIY systems you can use native resource controllers to limit bandwidth, CPU time or IOPS per container, process group or user. This makes it possible to enforce complex quality of service rules that prioritise critical workloads while still allowing experimental services to run in the background.

81. Strong separation between data layout and hardware chassis

With pools and datasets defined at the software level, you can move storage from one chassis to another or rebalance between servers without changing how applications see their paths. This separation makes it easier to evolve the physical layer over time while keeping logical layout stable.

82. Use as a standard test bench for vendor devices

A DIY NAS environment can act as a standard reference platform when you test routers, backup appliances or other network gear. Because it is not tied to one brand, it is easier to observe how third party devices behave when they read and write to a known stable storage backend.

83. Ability to layer multiple security models

DIY stacks allow you to combine filesystem permissions, network firewalls, container isolation, mandatory access control frameworks and external identity providers in creative ways. You are not limited to the single security model that a turnkey NAS interface exposes, which allows more nuanced defence in depth.

84. Fine control over logging and audit detail

You can configure exactly what is logged, where logs are stored and how long they are kept, from kernel messages to application events. Logs can be shipped to central collectors in formats that match your existing observability stack, making compliance and forensic analysis simpler.

85. Tailored behaviour for backup and disaster drills

DIY platforms can be wired into automated disaster simulations, where systems are repeatedly torn down and rebuilt to prove that recovery works. Storage configurations can be recreated from code, pools imported and test data restored on a schedule, instead of relying on manual wizard driven tests.

86. Ability to swap out components in the software stack over time

Over the lifetime of a DIY NAS, you can replace almost every layer: change the init system, switch to a different web interface, adopt a new container engine or even move from one DIY distribution to another while keeping the same pools. This modularity keeps the platform adaptable as tastes and technology change.

87. Better fit for organisations that avoid proprietary formats

Some organisations have policies against storing important data in formats that depend on closed code or single vendor tools. DIY NAS solutions using standard filesystems and open source utilities are easier to justify under these rules than appliances that use proprietary volume managers and configuration stores.

88. Helpful for education and training labs

Training providers and universities can deploy DIY NAS stacks inside virtual environments so that students can break, repair and rebuild storage systems without touching production gear. The same images can be reset between classes, giving learners realistic hands on experience at low cost.

89. Capacity to follow very specific legal or regulatory rules

In some jurisdictions or industries, unusual requirements appear, such as special retention schedules, local encryption standards or niche logging rules. DIY NAS environments can be scripted to satisfy these specific requirements even when no turnkey NAS vendor has considered them.

90. Natural choice when mixing many self hosted applications

If you already run a wide range of self hosted tools in containers or VMs, adding storage duties to that world with DIY software keeps everything consistent. The NAS simply becomes another service in the same orchestration fabric rather than a separate product with its own way of doing things.

91. Easier experimentation with new network filesystems

When new network filesystem projects appear, such as experimental user space protocols or research systems, they nearly always target Linux and BSD first. A DIY NAS gives you a platform to test these technologies for specific problems, long before any commercial vendor would consider supporting them.

92. Ability to enforce very conservative update policies

Some organisations prefer to update only once or twice a year after extensive internal testing. DIY NAS stacks allow you to freeze versions and postpone upgrades until you have validated them, instead of accepting automatic firmware updates that may change behaviour on the vendor schedule.

93. Better suitability for mixed licence environments

If you already pay for certain commercial tools but want the storage layer to stay licence free, DIY approaches give you that mix. You can run proprietary database or backup software while keeping the underlying storage platform open and under your control.

94. Simple way to expose standard development environments next to data

With Proxmox or similar platforms you can spin up development VMs or containers right next to the storage that holds source code and artefacts. Developers can work close to large repositories and test data without hauling everything over the network, using the NAS as both storage and dev host.

95. Easier to integrate with custom dashboards and reporting systems

Because DIY NAS boxes export metrics in standard ways or can run your own collectors, it is straightforward to feed storage statistics into company specific dashboards and reports. You can show exactly the charts and summaries that matter for your audience instead of relying on whatever reporting screens a vendor includes.

96. Straightforward reuse of disks in other systems if needed

If your plans change, you can remove disks from a DIY NAS, wipe or repurpose them in other servers without dealing with vendor specific metadata or compatibility warnings. The drives are just drives, not part of an opaque appliance ecosystem that expects to keep them forever.

97. Good platform for testing security tools and hardening guides

A DIY NAS can serve as a lab for experimenting with new security scanners, vulnerability assessment tools and hardening recommendations before you roll them out to production servers. You can observe how these changes affect a real storage workload and adjust accordingly.

98. Realistic environment for practising incident response

Because you control every part of the stack, you can simulate failures, intrusions or misconfigurations on a DIY NAS and then practise your incident response procedure. This kind of training is harder with commercial appliances where you cannot fully control or inspect all layers.

99. Freedom to keep legacy protocols alive while you migrate

In some environments you still need to support older protocols for a while, for example legacy SMB dialects or older NFS versions. DIY NAS systems let you keep these services available during migration while still offering modern protocols to new clients, with careful isolation where needed.

100. Serves as a long lived foundation independent of brand trends

Vendors come and go, change direction or pivot to new markets, but the core technologies behind DIY NAS platforms have existed for decades and are used in many places beyond home storage. Building on that foundation means your data and workflows are less tied to the fashion of any particular hardware brand.

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NAS Compares
Zimacube 2 NAS Revealed – Everything We Know
18 mars 2026 à 16:30

Zimacube 2 NAS Revealed – Everything We Know

NAS Compares

Par : Rob Andrews

18 mars 2026 à 16:30

ZimaCube 2 NAS Announced – Bigger? Better? The Same?

IceWhale’s original ZimaCube and ZimaCube Pro established the company’s move beyond compact single-board servers and into desktop NAS hardware aimed at prosumers, creators, and home lab users. The standard ZimaCube launched at $699 with an Intel N100, while the ZimaCube Pro raised the ceiling with an Intel Core i5-1235U, 10GbE, Thunderbolt 4, faster 7th-bay M.2 performance, and broader appeal for heavier workloads. Both systems were positioned less as closed NAS appliances and more as flexible personal cloud platforms, with ZimaOS pre-installed and support for alternative operating systems such as TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox, pfSense, and Linux distributions. As with many crowdfunded hardware products, the first generation also required some early post-launch refinement, particularly around areas such as fan behaviour, thermal tuning, and broader system optimisation, which was reflected in community support discussions and early optimisation guidance from IceWhale.

Remember to use the NASCompares Channel Discount Code: ‘NASCOMPARES50’

The newly revealed ZimaCube 2 family builds directly on that same idea, but with a clearer emphasis on higher-performance local storage, hybrid workloads, and hardware expansion. The new range starts with the $799 ZimaCube 2 Standard, moves to the $1,299 ZimaCube 2 Pro, and extends to a $2,499 Creator Pack that adds 64GB of memory, 1TB of SSD storage, and an NVIDIA RTX Pro 2000 GPU. Based on the specifications revealed so far, IceWhale is positioning this generation as a more capable platform for media serving, virtualization, containers, AI-assisted workloads, and direct-attached creative workflows, while continuing to stress open hardware, multi-OS support, and the absence of ecosystem lock-in. Unlike the first ZimaCube generation, which began as a Kickstarter-era product, the ZimaCube 2 line is already being presented through standard pre-order retail channels ahead of its expected March 30 shipment window.

ZimaCube 2 – Design & Storage

From a design standpoint, the ZimaCube 2 family appears to retain the same broad desktop form factor as the earlier models, with listed dimensions of 240 x 221 x 220 mm. IceWhale is continuing with the same general visual approach: a compact metal chassis, magnetic front panel, and a visible RGB lighting element rather than the more utilitarian styling used by many conventional NAS systems. The company is also still presenting the system as something intended to sit on a desk rather than be hidden away, which places equal weight on appearance, acoustics, and accessibility alongside storage capacity.

The storage layout remains one of the more distinctive parts of the design. As before, the system uses a 6-bay SATA arrangement for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives, but it is paired with a separate 7th-bay expansion structure built around 4 M.2 slots.

IceWhale continues to frame this as a hybrid storage design, separating bulk-capacity HDD storage from faster solid-state tiers for cache, active project data, applications, or virtualised workloads. In practical terms, that gives the ZimaCube 2 a broader remit than a basic backup NAS, since it is being positioned to handle both long-term storage and higher-speed local workloads within the same enclosure.

What is different in this generation is less the physical layout itself and more the way IceWhale is defining its purpose. The company is now pushing the 6+4 architecture more explicitly as a tiered storage platform for creators, self-hosters, and home lab users, with references to 164TB+ capacity, active “hot zone” NVMe storage, and room for long-term archive duties. That said, the overall storage philosophy is still familiar rather than radically new: the ZimaCube 2 appears to refine and repackage an existing concept instead of introducing a fundamentally different chassis or bay arrangement. The main change is that IceWhale is placing greater emphasis on workflow separation, SSD acceleration, and long-term expandability than it did with the original launch material.

ZimaCube 2 – Internal Hardware

Internally, the ZimaCube 2 range is split more clearly than the first generation. The base ZimaCube 2 moves to an Intel Core i3-1215U with 8GB of DDR5 memory, while the ZimaCube 2 Pro uses an Intel Core i5-1235U with 16GB of DDR5. At the top end, the Creator Pack keeps the same Core i5 platform but adds 64GB of memory, 1TB of NVMe storage, and a discrete NVIDIA RTX Pro 2000. That gives IceWhale a broader spread than before, from an entry configuration that is still positioned above the original N100-based ZimaCube to a much more workstation-like variant aimed at GPU-assisted workloads.

The wider platform also reflects a shift in how IceWhale wants these systems to be used. The first ZimaCube family already supported alternative operating systems, containers, media serving, and some expansion, but the ZimaCube 2 line places far more emphasis on concurrent mixed workloads. IceWhale is explicitly framing the hardware around virtual machines, Docker containers, AI tools, real-time media handling, and direct high-speed project access, which explains the move to newer mobile Intel processors, DDR5 memory, and a more aggressive expansion story. In that sense, the second generation is less a conventional NAS refresh and more an attempt to position the product as a compact storage server with broader compute utility.

CPU spec	ZimaCube 2	ZimaCube 2 Pro
Processor	Intel Core i3-1215U	Intel Core i5-1235U
Generation	12th Gen Intel Core U-series	12th Gen Intel Core U-series
Total cores	6	10
Performance cores	2	2
Efficient cores	4	8
Threads	8	12
Max turbo frequency	4.40GHz	4.40GHz
P-core max turbo	4.40GHz	4.40GHz
E-core max turbo	3.30GHz	3.30GHz
Intel Smart Cache	10MB	12MB
Processor base power	15W	15W
Maximum turbo power	55W	55W
Integrated graphics	Intel UHD Graphics	Intel Iris Xe Graphics

In practical terms, the main difference is not clock speed, since both chips top out at 4.40GHz, but core count and thread count. The i5-1235U adds 4 more Efficient cores, 4 more threads, and 2MB more cache, which should make it noticeably better suited to heavier multitasking, containers, background services, and mixed NAS plus VM workloads.

Model	CPU	Key CPU difference
ZimaCube 2	Intel Core i3-1215U	Lower-tier chip with 6 cores and 8 threads
ZimaCube 2 Pro	Intel Core i5-1235U	Higher-tier chip with 10 cores and 12 threads, better suited to heavier parallel workloads

At the same time, the headline changes need to be read carefully. The ZimaCube 2 Pro remains on the same Core i5-1235U class processor as the previous ZimaCube Pro, so not every model represents a major CPU leap. The more meaningful changes are in how the range is tiered, the addition of a pre-configured GPU-equipped Creator Pack, and the clearer effort to make higher-end use cases part of the official positioning rather than secondary possibilities. For buyers comparing model to model, the internal hardware story is therefore partly about real platform flexibility and partly about IceWhale packaging familiar capabilities into more defined product tiers.

Specification	ZimaCube 2	ZimaCube 2 Pro	ZimaCube 2 Creator Pack
Processor	Intel Core i3-1215U	Intel Core i5-1235U	Intel Core i5-1235U
CPU cores / threads	6 cores	10 cores / 12 threads	10 cores / 12 threads
Max clock	Up to 4.4GHz	Up to 4.4GHz	Up to 4.4GHz
GPU	Integrated graphics	Intel Iris Xe	NVIDIA RTX Pro 2000
Memory	8GB DDR5-4800	16GB DDR5-4800	64GB DDR5-4800
Max memory	64GB	64GB	64GB
System storage	256GB NVMe SSD	256GB NVMe SSD	1TB NVMe SSD
PCIe expansion	PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 3.0 x2	PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 3.0 x2	PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 3.0 x2
M.2 support	1 onboard + 4 in 7th bay	1 onboard + 4 in 7th bay	1 onboard + 4 in 7th bay
SATA drive support	6 bays	6 bays	6 bays
Rated power	247W	247W	247W

ZimaCube 2 – Ports & Connections

The connectivity story is one of the clearer areas where IceWhale is trying to separate the ZimaCube 2 family from entry-level NAS hardware. Across the new range, the headline feature is the inclusion of 2 rear Thunderbolt 4 or USB4-class USB-C connections rated at 40Gbps on both the standard and Pro tier, which IceWhale is positioning for direct Mac or PC attachment as well as high-speed external expansion. That is a notable distinction from many mainstream NAS products, which typically rely on Ethernet alone for primary high-speed access. Here, IceWhale is clearly trying to support both networked storage use and direct-attached workflow scenarios from the same box.

Networking is also relatively strong on paper. Based on the revealed specifications, the ZimaCube 2 family includes 2 x Intel i226 2.5GbE ports and 1 x Marvell AQC113 10GbE port exclusively on the Pro model. In practical terms, that allows for several deployment options, including direct multi-gig connections, use as a higher-speed shared storage node, or separation of management and data traffic. For users comparing it with the previous generation, the main point is that higher-end network capability now appears to be treated as a core part of the wider ZimaCube 2 platform rather than something reserved only for the Pro model.

The rest of the external I/O is fairly conventional but functional. IceWhale lists 4 x USB-A 3.0 ports, 1 x USB-C 3.0 port, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Combined with the PCIe expansion support inside the chassis, that gives the platform a broader connection profile than a typical sealed NAS appliance. Even so, the real significance here is not any single port in isolation, but the fact that IceWhale continues to present the ZimaCube 2 as a hybrid device that sits somewhere between a NAS, a small server, and a compact workstation-class storage platform.

Connection	ZimaCube 2 family
Ethernet	2 x Intel i226 2.5GbE, 1 x Marvell AQC113 10GbE (Pro Only)
Thunderbolt / USB4	2 x rear USB-C, up to 40Gbps
USB-A	4 x USB-A 3.0
USB-C	1 x USB-C 3.0
Display outputs	1 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x HDMI 2.0
Audio	1 x 3.5mm audio jack
PCIe expansion support	PCIe 4.0 x4 in physical x16, PCIe 3.0 x2 in physical x8

ZimaCube 2 vs ZimaCube 1 – What Has Changed?

The biggest change is at the bottom of the range. The original ZimaCube was built around Intel’s N100, DDR4 memory, Gen 3 expansion, and 2 x 2.5GbE, which made it the more basic model in the lineup. By contrast, the new ZimaCube 2 raises the baseline to a Core i3-1215U with DDR5 memory, while keeping the same overall 6-bay chassis concept and hybrid storage approach. That is a meaningful improvement in entry-level compute capability, but it does not completely remove the gap between standard and Pro variants, since the non-Pro ZimaCube 2 still stops at 2 x 2.5GbE and does not gain the extra 10GbE port.

The Pro side is a more mixed story. The original ZimaCube Pro already offered a Core i5-1235U, DDR5, 10GbE, Thunderbolt 4, and faster M.2 performance in the 7th bay, so the ZimaCube 2 Pro does not represent the same kind of obvious jump seen on the standard model. In CPU terms, it appears to stay in essentially the same class, which makes this look more like a product refinement than a full hardware reset. IceWhale is clearly pushing the second generation more aggressively toward creator workflows, virtualization, AI-related use cases, and direct-attached high-speed storage, but that broader messaging should not be mistaken for a major leap in every core hardware area.

That leaves the ZimaCube 2 generation looking unevenly improved depending on which model is being compared. The standard ZimaCube 2 is substantially more capable than the first non-Pro system, while the ZimaCube 2 Pro looks more like a cleaner, more retail-ready continuation of what the first Pro already set out to do. The new Creator Pack is the main addition that materially changes the shape of the lineup, since it introduces a pre-configured GPU-equipped option rather than leaving that path entirely to user expansion. So while IceWhale is presenting the ZimaCube 2 family as a broader second-generation platform, the actual extent of change varies quite sharply between the base and Pro tiers.

Specification	ZimaCube	ZimaCube 2	ZimaCube Pro	ZimaCube 2 Pro
Launch price	$699	$799	$1,099	$1,299
Processor	Intel N100	Intel Core i3-1215U	Intel Core i5-1235U	Intel Core i5-1235U
CPU class change	Baseline	Clear upgrade over ZimaCube	Higher-end original model	Largely same CPU tier as ZimaCube Pro
Memory	8GB DDR4-3200	8GB DDR5-4800	16GB DDR5-4800	16GB DDR5-4800
Max memory	16GB	64GB	32GB	64GB
System storage	256GB NVMe SSD	256GB NVMe SSD	256GB NVMe SSD	256GB NVMe SSD
6-bay SATA storage	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
7th bay	4 x M.2	4 x M.2	4 x M.2	4 x M.2
7th-bay speed	800MB/s R/W	800MB/s R/W listed	3200MB/s R/W	3200MB/s R/W listed
PCIe expansion	Gen 3	PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 3.0 x2	Gen 4 + Gen 3	PCIe 4.0 x4 + PCIe 3.0 x2
Networking	2 x 2.5GbE	2 x 2.5GbE	2 x 2.5GbE + 1 x 10GbE	2 x 2.5GbE + 1 x 10GbE
Thunderbolt 4 / USB4	No	2 x rear USB-C	2 x rear USB-C	2 x rear USB-C
USB	More limited	4 x USB-A 3.0, 1 x USB-C 3.0	4 x USB-A 3.0, 1 x USB-C 3.0	4 x USB-A 3.0, 1 x USB-C 3.0
Display outputs	DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0	DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0	DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0	DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0
Dimensions	240 x 221 x 220 mm	240 x 221 x 220 mm	240 x 221 x 220 mm	240 x 221 x 220 mm

ZimaOS – The Software that is included with the ZimaCube 2 (Is it actually any good?)

ZimaOS is IceWhale’s Linux-based NAS operating system, developed out of the earlier CasaOS foundation and originally tied closely to the ZimaCube hardware before becoming available more broadly as a standalone platform. In practical terms, its main appeal is that it tries to lower the barrier to entry for first-time NAS users without stripping away too much of the flexibility expected from a self-hosted system. Based on the information provided, the software combines a browser-based management interface with a dedicated Zima Client application for desktop and mobile, giving it a more guided and consumer-facing feel than many free NAS operating systems.

Installation appears relatively straightforward, using a standard image-writing process and USB boot method, and the platform is light enough to run on modest boot media rather than requiring a large dedicated SSD. The interface focuses heavily on accessibility: native file browsing, straightforward share creation, basic RAID setup, network management, cloud and LAN storage integration, drive mapping, local backup jobs, and remote access are all presented in a simplified GUI rather than being heavily dependent on command line work. That simplicity is one of its clearest points of distinction from platforms such as TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault, which can offer deeper storage control but are often more intimidating to less experienced users.

At the same time, ZimaOS is not being positioned as a stripped-down toy platform. IceWhale is clearly treating it as a full software layer for a turnkey NAS or personal cloud deployment, with support for app containers, developer mode, SSH access, SMB sharing, Time Machine compatibility, AI-assisted semantic search, and direct Thunderbolt connectivity on supported hardware. The client application is also an important part of the package, since it extends the platform beyond simple browser access by adding local discovery, mapped access, backup synchronisation, and peer-to-peer file transfer in a way that many free NAS platforms do not include by default.

However, the software still has some visible limits: configuration depth remains lighter than enterprise-oriented rivals, some features appear to be more polished than others, and direct Thunderbolt or USB4 support may still depend heavily on driver compatibility and the exact hardware being used. Its RAID tools are deliberately simple, but do not currently match the flexibility of more mature systems in areas such as mixed-drive storage schemes.

Pricing also shows how IceWhale is segmenting the platform in 2026: the base ZimaOS Free tier includes core features, the Zima Client for mobile and PC, Thunderbolt support, developer mode, support for up to 4 disks, and 3 members, while ZimaOS+ adds unlimited disks and unlimited users for a $29 lifetime license (to confirm, any ZimaCube, Zimaboard and ZimaBlade device includes the lifetime license). Taken together, ZimaOS appears to sit in a useful middle ground: more approachable than many traditional NAS operating systems, more complete than many lightweight hobbyist options, and increasingly viable both as bundled software for ZimaCube hardware and as a standalone OS for low-cost custom systems.

ZimaCube 2 – Worth it? Price and Release Date?

Taken at face value, the ZimaCube 2 family looks more like a measured revision of the original concept than a major generational leap. Compared with the first ZimaCube, there are clear upgrades in entry-level processor choice, memory platform, expansion framing, and product segmentation, but the broader structure remains very familiar. The unchanged chassis dimensions, continued 6-bay plus 7th-bay layout, and the fact that the Pro model remains in essentially the same CPU class as before all make this feel closer to the kind of 2 to 3 year refresh cycle often seen from established turnkey NAS vendors such as Synology and QNAP, rather than a wholly new platform that significantly expands the portfolio or redefines what the product is.

That said, this does not make the ZimaCube 2 underwhelming in absolute terms. Even if the scale of change appears evolutionary rather than transformative, it is still a notably well-equipped system on paper, with ZimaOS included, direct Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 connectivity, PCIe expansion, hybrid storage flexibility, and a full hardware and software turnkey approach that many DIY alternatives do not offer in one package. The result is a platform that may not radically depart from the first ZimaCube’s formula, but still presents a relatively complete and capable storage server solution for users who want open deployment options without having to assemble and integrate everything themselves.

In pricing terms, IceWhale is placing the ZimaCube 2 range above the original entry model but still within the upper end of the prosumer NAS and compact server market. The ZimaCube 2 starts at $799, the ZimaCube 2 Pro rises to $1,299, and the Creator Pack reaches $2,499 with its added GPU, memory, and larger SSD allocation. That means the new range is not being introduced as a low-cost disruption, but rather as a more fully specified turnkey platform aimed at users who want performance, flexibility, and direct connectivity in a single package. IceWhale is currently listing the systems as pre-orders, with shipping expected to begin from March 30, suggesting that the second generation is being brought to market through a more conventional retail path than the original crowdfunding-led launch.

Remember to use the NASCompares Channel Discount Code: ‘NASCOMPARES50’

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NAS Compares
UniFi UNAS 4 Review
9 mars 2026 à 15:00

UniFi UNAS 4 Review

NAS Compares

Par : Rob Andrews

9 mars 2026 à 15:00

UniFi UNAS 4 NAS Review – Simple Safe Storage?

The UniFi UNAS 4 is Ubiquiti’s desktop 4 bay NAS and part of the company’s growing UniFi storage portfolio. Positioned as a compact network storage appliance, it is designed to provide centralized file storage, backups, and shared access within a local network, while also integrating with the wider UniFi management platform. The 4 bay form factor is widely considered a practical starting point for NAS deployments, offering enough capacity for RAID redundancy while maintaining a relatively small physical footprint suitable for offices, home labs, and small business environments. At $379, the UNAS 4 enters the market as a relatively affordable turnkey NAS that includes both hardware and the UniFi Drive software platform. The system combines traditional SATA storage bays with NVMe SSD caching support and 2.5GbE networking, while also introducing PoE+++ power as a deployment option. On paper, the device aims to deliver a straightforward storage solution that focuses on core NAS functionality rather than attempting to compete directly with more feature heavy platforms.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Quick Conclusion

TLDR: The UniFi UNAS 4 is a compact $379 4 bay NAS aimed at straightforward file storage and backups, with a clean UniFi oriented deployment that includes PoE+++ power plus data over a single cable and a bundled 90W adapter for non PoE setups. It combines 4 SATA bays with 2 M.2 NVMe slots for SSD caching, simple click and load drive trays, and a small front status display, while UniFi Drive provides the expected NAS services such as SMB and NFS access, RAID options, snapshots, encryption, share links, and multi user management, plus backup support that can include other UNAS targets, SMB destinations, and several cloud providers. The main compromises are the single 2.5GbE port that caps throughput and offers no redundancy, NVMe trays not being included despite the slots being present, and a USB C port that currently functions mostly for basic external storage rather than broader expansion, so it fits best when the goal is uncomplicated storage within a UniFi managed environment rather than a more flexible, performance oriented NAS platform.

BUILD QUALITY - 9/10

HARDWARE - 7/10

PERFORMANCE - 7/10

PRICE - 9/10

VALUE - 9/10

8.2

PROS

$379 pricing is competitive for a turnkey 4 bay NAS with UniFi Drive included

4 bay 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch SATA support for flexible capacity planning

2 x M.2 NVMe slots for read and write SSD caching

PoE+++ support enables single cable power plus data deployment

90W PoE+++ mains adapter included, so PoE infrastructure is optional

Simple click and load HDD trays with straightforward access for drive installs and swaps

Front 1.47 inch color LCM display provides basic status and activity visibility

UniFi Drive software includes RAID options, snapshots, encryption, share links, and user management

CONS

Single 2.5GbE port limits throughput and provides no network redundancy or aggregation

M.2 NVMe trays not included, adding cost to use SSD caching

USB C port is currently limited in utility beyond basic external storage attachment

Here are all the current UniFi NAS Solutions & Prices:

UniFi UNAS 4 (4 Bay + 2x M2, $379) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 2 (2 Bay, $199) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro (7 Bay, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 4 (4 Bay + 2x M.2, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 8 (8-Bay + 2x M.2, $799) HERE

You can buy the UniFi UNAS 4 NAS via the link below – doing so will result in a small commission coming to me and Eddie at NASCompares, and allows us to keep doing what we do!

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Design & Storage

The UniFi UNAS 4 uses a compact desktop chassis that differs from the more traditional box shaped NAS designs seen from many competing brands. The enclosure is relatively narrow and deep, giving it a vertical appearance that resembles some earlier consumer NAS designs. The casing itself is constructed from polycarbonate rather than metal, which keeps overall weight down to around 2.6 kg without drives installed. Ventilation is primarily handled through openings along the upper portion of the chassis, with airflow directed toward a rear mounted cooling fan.

At the front of the unit is a small 1.47 inch color LCM display that provides basic system information. This panel is not touch enabled but can show details such as drive activity, network activity, and general system status. It acts primarily as a quick visual reference rather than a full control interface. For most configuration and monitoring tasks, the system is intended to be managed through the UniFi Drive interface via a web browser or mobile application.

The primary storage configuration consists of 4 drive bays supporting either 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch SATA drives. Each drive uses an individual tray that slides into the chassis and clicks into place without requiring screws for 3.5 inch drives. The trays are ventilated and designed for relatively straightforward installation or replacement, although they are not lockable. Compared with earlier UniFi NAS designs that grouped multiple drives into a single tray, the use of separate trays simplifies drive access and improves hot swap usability.

In addition to the main hard drive bays, the system includes 2 M.2 NVMe slots intended for SSD caching. These slots are located in a separate compartment on the base of the device and can be accessed by removing a small cover using the included key. Once installed, these SSDs can be used to provide read and write caching to improve responsiveness when working with frequently accessed data. At the time of writing, these NVMe drives cannot be used as independent storage pools and are limited to caching roles.

One design choice that may affect installation is that the trays required to hold the NVMe SSDs are not included in the retail package. Instead, they must be purchased separately or obtained as part of pre populated SSD modules from Ubiquiti. While the M.2 slots themselves are built into the device, the lack of included trays adds an additional step and cost for users who intend to make use of SSD caching alongside the main hard drive storage.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Internal Hardware

Internally, the UniFi UNAS 4 is built around a quad core ARM Cortex A55 processor running at 1.7 GHz. This type of processor is commonly used in embedded networking hardware and lower power storage appliances, where efficiency and reliability are prioritized over raw processing performance. Ubiquiti has extensive experience deploying ARM architectures across its networking and infrastructure products, and the choice here aligns with the system’s intended role as a dedicated storage appliance rather than a general purpose server platform.

The system includes 4 GB of LPDDR4 memory, which is fixed and not user upgradeable. For the core functions the device is designed to handle, such as file transfers, backups, and storage management, this amount of memory is generally sufficient. However, the fixed memory configuration does place a ceiling on how much additional functionality the hardware could realistically support in the future, particularly if the software platform expands with additional services or heavier workloads.

From a power perspective, the system is designed to operate within a relatively modest power envelope. The maximum system power consumption is rated at 90 W, with a maximum drive power budget of 80 W. Power delivery is handled through PoE+++, allowing both data and power to be carried through the same Ethernet connection when used with compatible infrastructure. For deployments without PoE support, the device ships with a 90 W PoE+++ adapter, allowing it to be powered from a standard mains outlet while still maintaining the same connection layout.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Ports and Connections

The UniFi UNAS 4 keeps connectivity simple, with a single 2.5GbE RJ45 port handling both network data and PoE+++ power delivery. This allows the unit to be deployed with a single cable when used with compatible switches or injectors, which can reduce cable clutter and simplify placement compared with NAS systems that require separate power and network connections. The port supports 2.5G, 1G, 100M, and 10M link speeds, so it can operate in mixed networks even if 2.5GbE infrastructure is not available.

The main limitation is that there is only 1 network interface, with no secondary port for link aggregation, redundancy, or dedicated management traffic. In practical terms, this reduces options for failover and makes the network connection a single point of dependency. It also places a hard ceiling on throughput, which is relevant on a 4 bay system where aggregate drive performance can exceed what a single 2.5GbE link can sustain in some workloads.

For external expansion, the device includes a 5 Gbps USB C port intended for attaching external storage. In its current form, it functions primarily as a straightforward way to connect a USB drive for basic transfers rather than as a broader expansion interface. The hardware capability suggests potential for wider use cases, but the available functionality is mainly determined by what UniFi Drive supports at the software level.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Software and Services

The UNAS 4 runs UniFi Drive and is managed through the same UniFi style web interface used across the wider portfolio, with system status, storage, backups, and user access presented through a single dashboard. For typical NAS use, the core functions are in place: initializing drives, building RAID storage, creating shared and personal drives, enabling file services, and checking drive health information. The interface is mostly structured around completing common tasks quickly and keeping administration consistent with other UniFi products, rather than exposing a long list of granular configuration controls. That approach makes initial setup and day to day management relatively straightforward, but it also means experienced NAS users may notice limits in how far the system can be tuned.

File access is centered on SMB and NFS, with browser based file management available for basic upload, download, and folder navigation. The web file manager covers essential functions and includes share link creation plus thumbnail and preview handling, but it is not designed as a full productivity layer with collaborative editing or advanced file workflow tools. Client access is largely built around standard network shares and UniFi’s account-driven identity layer, and while the system can be deployed locally without relying on a UniFi account, the most integrated remote workflow is clearly designed around UniFi’s own UI and identity services rather than third party remote networking options.

Data protection features cover most of what is expected for a general purpose file NAS. UniFi Drive supports snapshots, encrypted storage, and configurable retention policies, which covers common rollback needs and basic ransomware recovery strategy when paired with sensible scheduling. Backup tooling is one of the stronger areas in terms of scope, supporting tasks to another UniFi NAS, to SMB targets, and to cloud services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi. Time Machine support is also present for macOS environments, and Microsoft 365 backup is part of the broader UniFi Drive direction, even if the overall feature set remains more storage and protection focused than application focused.

The limitations are consistent with the UNAS 4’s role and its hardware profile. There is no iSCSI target support, which restricts certain virtualization, hypervisor, and block storage workflows, and there is no container or VM layer intended for running third party services directly on the device. NVMe support remains limited to SSD caching rather than separate pools, and on the UNAS 4 that caching is also constrained by the single 2.5GbE connection, which can cap how much of the cache benefit is visible over the network in sustained sequential transfers. More broadly, system level configuration remains relatively contained, with fewer advanced networking and scheduling controls than many established NAS platforms provide.

Client side tooling is also still relatively limited compared with ecosystems that offer a more developed sync, selective download, and offline pinning experience across desktop and mobile. UniFi Drive does provide client app support and identity driven access, but the overall workflow remains closer to traditional network share usage than to a full cloud drive style experience. As it stands, the software aligns with the UNAS 4’s positioning as a storage and backup appliance with a clean management layer, rather than a platform intended to replace a more feature dense NAS operating system.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Noise, Temp, Temp & Performance

In practical use, performance on the UNAS 4 is largely shaped by its single 2.5GbE connection. With mechanical drives, the system can deliver consistent transfer rates that sit within the expected ceiling of a 2.5GbE link, but it does not have the networking headroom to take full advantage of what a 4 drive array can potentially deliver under sustained sequential workloads. This is most noticeable when using higher capacity 7200 RPM drives, where the combined throughput of multiple disks can exceed the network limit even before SSD caching is factored in.

Testing with mixed file transfers showed typical throughput in the range of roughly 180 to 250 MB/s depending on file type and workload, with higher results generally observed once NVMe caching was enabled. A 50 GB Windows transfer completed at a pace that aligned with these figures, with sustained rates remaining stable rather than spiking briefly and then dropping sharply. The overall behaviour suggests that the device can maintain steady network limited transfers, but it is not designed to chase peak throughput beyond what 2.5GbE allows.

NVMe caching improved responsiveness and helped maintain higher sustained transfer speeds, particularly during repeated reads and writes where the cache could play an active role. However, the caching implementation is limited to acceleration rather than acting as a separate storage tier, and the benefit is workload dependent. Large sequential transfers still remain constrained by the network port, while smaller or more frequently accessed data sees more practical gains from the cache layer.

From an operational standpoint, power draw remained relatively modest for a 4 bay system. A baseline measurement with no drives installed was around 14.1 W. With 4 HDDs and 2 NVMe SSDs installed, idle power use was observed at around 46 W, rising to roughly 50 to 51 W under active read and write workloads with moderate CPU and memory utilization. The relatively small gap between idle and active indicates that drive idle draw forms a significant portion of the total consumption in typical day to day use.

UniFi UNAS 4 Review – Conclusion & Verdict

The UniFi UNAS 4 is a compact 4 bay NAS that prioritizes straightforward storage deployment, particularly for users already running UniFi hardware and UniFi management. Its pricing, PoE+++ support with an included adapter, NVMe caching capability, and generally simple physical drive access make it a practical option for core NAS tasks such as shared folders, backups, and centralized file storage. The hardware choices are consistent with that goal, and the platform is best assessed as a storage appliance rather than a general purpose server. On the software side, UniFi Drive provides the expected baseline services for this category, including SMB and NFS file access, RAID options, snapshots, encrypted storage, share links, and multi user management. Backup support is broader than the basics, with options that can include remote UNAS targets, SMB destinations, and several mainstream cloud services, along with Time Machine support for macOS. Management is clearly aimed at keeping configuration simple through a unified interface, but it also remains more limited than mature NAS platforms in areas such as deeper system tuning, third party remote access alternatives, and broader application style features.

The trade offs are easy to identify. A single 2.5GbE port limits peak throughput and removes options such as link aggregation or network failover, which matters more on a 4 bay system than it would on a smaller unit. The NVMe slots are limited to caching rather than independent pools, and using them adds cost due to trays not being included. Cooling behaviour can become more noticeable if fan speed increases, and the USB C port currently operates mainly as an external drive attachment point rather than a broader expansion interface. Overall, the UNAS 4 makes the most sense when its role is kept narrow, and when UniFi Drive’s storage and backup feature set, alongside UniFi ecosystem integration, is a meaningful part of the purchase decision.

You can buy the UniFi UNAS 4 NAS via the link below – doing so will result in a small commission coming to me and Eddie at NASCompares, and allows us to keep doing what we do!

PROs of the UniFi UNAS 4

CONs of the UniFi UNAS 4

$379 pricing is competitive for a turnkey 4 bay NAS with UniFi Drive included
4 bay 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch SATA support for flexible capacity planning
2 x M.2 NVMe slots for read and write SSD caching
PoE+++ support enables single cable power plus data deployment
90W PoE+++ mains adapter included, so PoE infrastructure is optional
Simple click and load HDD trays with straightforward access for drive installs and swaps
Front 1.47 inch color LCM display provides basic status and activity visibility
UniFi Drive software includes RAID options, snapshots, encryption, share links, and user management

Single 2.5GbE port limits throughput and provides no network redundancy or aggregation
M.2 NVMe trays not included, adding cost to use SSD caching
USB C port is currently limited in utility beyond basic external storage attachment

Here are all the current UniFi NAS Solutions & Prices:

UniFi UNAS 4 (4 Bay + 2x M2, $379) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 2 (2 Bay, $199) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro (7 Bay, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 4 (4 Bay + 2x M.2, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 8 (8-Bay + 2x M.2, $799) HERE

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This description contains links to Amazon. These links will take you to some of the products mentioned in today's content. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Visit the NASCompares Deal Finder to find the best place to buy this device in your region, based on Service, Support and Reputation - Just Search for your NAS Drive in the Box Below

Need Advice on Data Storage from an Expert?

Finally, for free advice about your setup, just leave a message in the comments below here at NASCompares.com and we will get back to you.

Need Help? Where possible (and where appropriate) please provide as much information about your requirements, as then I can arrange the best answer and solution to your needs. Do not worry about your e-mail address being required, it will NOT be used in a mailing list and will NOT be used in any way other than to respond to your enquiry. [contact-form-7]

If you like this service, please consider supporting us. We use affiliate links on the blog allowing NAScompares information and advice service to be free of charge to you.Anything you purchase on the day you click on our links will generate a small commission which isused to run the website. Here is a link for Amazon and B&H.You can also get me a

Ko-fi or old school Paypal. Thanks!To find out more about how to support this advice service check HEREIf you need to fix or configure a NAS, check Fiver Have you thought about helping others with your knowledge? Find Instructions Here

Or support us by using our affiliate links on Amazon UK and Amazon US

Alternatively, why not ask me on the ASK NASCompares forum, by clicking the button below. This is a community hub that serves as a place that I can answer your question, chew the fat, share new release information and even get corrections posted. I will always get around to answering ALL queries, but as a one-man operation, I cannot promise speed! So by sharing your query in the ASK NASCompares section below, you can get a better range of solutions and suggestions, alongside my own.

Cachem
IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique
23 février 2026 à 07:00

IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique

Cachem

Par : Fx

23 février 2026 à 07:00

L’IT Partner est un événement high-tech que j’apprécie particulièrement. Pour cette 20e édition, le salon se tenait une nouvelle fois à l’Arena de La Défense. C’est un rendez-vous unique qui permet de rencontrer, sur un même site, plusieurs fabricants de NAS… mais pas seulement. En effet, au-delà du stockage, l’événement couvre l’ensemble de l’écosystème IT : infrastructures, cybersécurité, réseaux, cloud, services managés, distribution et intégration. Un concentré du marché en deux jours.

ITPartners 2026 - IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique

Un passage express, mais ciblé

Pendant ces 2 jours, pas moins de 230 exposants étaient présents. Cette année, mon agenda était particulièrement contraint. Malheureusement, je n’ai pu passer qu’un peu moins de deux heures sur le salon, et uniquement le second jour.

J’avais donc préparé en amont la liste des acteurs que je souhaitais absolument rencontrer. Résultat : un parcours optimisé, au pas de course, mais efficace.

Synology, Asustor et Ugreen : focus NAS

Ugreen : une première remarquée

ugreen it partners - IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique

Ugreen participait pour la première fois au salon avec son propre stand (et il ne désemplissait pas). La marque attire clairement la curiosité sur le marché du NAS. J’ai pu échanger longuement avec Gaëlle, France Business Development Manager, au sujet de l’arrivée d’Ugreen sur ce segment et des opportunités à venir pour le fabricant. La stratégie est ambitieuse et le positionnement mérite d’être suivi de près.

Asustor : montée en puissance en France

asustor it parteners - IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique

Asustor participait à son premier salon en France. Le constructeur était présent sur le stand du grossiste ALSO. La France (et plus largement l’Europe) représente un marché stratégique pour la marque. La présence de Mehdi, Sales Manager, a permis un échange constructif sur la situation actuelle du secteur et sur la stratégie de développement d’Asustor. Petite déception toutefois : Damien, bien connu de la communauté, n’était pas présent cette année. Ce sera pour une prochaine édition.

Synology : présence solide, peu de nouveautés

synology it partners - IT Partners 2026 : un rendez-vous toujours stratégique

Comme toujours, Synology était au rendez-vous, avec une présence sur deux corners distincts via deux grossistes. Beaucoup de monde sur les espaces dédiés, preuve de l’intérêt constant pour la marque. En revanche, peu de nouveautés majeures à découvrir sur place cette année.

QNAP : une absence remarquée

On notera l’absence de stand pour QNAP. Même si j’ai croisé deux membres de l’équipe, le constructeur ne disposait ni de stand dédié ni de corner partagé. Un choix compréhensible au regard de leur actualité chargée (déménagement, nouveaux produits, roadshow…), mais une présence officielle aurait été appréciée.

Un événement incontournable pour les professionnels IT

L’IT Partners reste un rendez-vous clé pour les professionnels du secteur. Le salon offre un cadre efficace pour échanger avec les fabricants et les distributeurs, découvrir de nouvelles solutions et renforcer son réseau.

Même en passage rapide, la valeur ajoutée est bien réelle. Pour tous les acteurs de l’écosystème IT (intégrateurs, revendeurs, MSP ou éditeurs) c’est un événement à inscrire dans l’agenda.

NAS Compares
UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS Review
18 février 2026 à 15:43

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS Review

NAS Compares

Par : Rob Andrews

18 février 2026 à 15:43

Review of the UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS – Possibly the Best Value 1U Rack Ever?

Over the last 18-24 months, Ubiquiti has shifted the ‘UniFi’ label from being a networking and bridging ecosystem into a wider storage hardware and software platform that now includes a steadily expanding NAS line under UniFi Drive. Early UniFi UNAS storage products leaned heavily on simple file sharing and basic backup, but the pace of updates and the broader product rollout in 2025/2026 pushed the range closer to what small business buyers expect from an entry level NAS platform: clearer storage management, stronger snapshot and backup tooling, and tighter integration with the UniFi account and identity layer for remote access and user control (with the recent Drive 4.0 Update really uping their game considerably). The UniFi UNAS Pro 4 sits within that context as a compact 1U, 4 bay rack mount system designed mainly for file storage and sharing over SMB and NFS, rather than running third party applications, containers, or virtual machines. At $499, it is priced noticeably lower than many competing 1U rack NAS products at broadly comparable “headline” hardware, particularly where dual 10Gb networking and NVMe caching are concerned, which makes it hard to ignore if the goal is simple, high bandwidth storage in a rack footprint without moving into significantly higher spend.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Quick Conclusion

The UniFi UNAS Pro 4 is a 1U, 4 bay rack mount NAS aimed at straightforward SMB and NFS file storage, and its main differentiator is value: at $499 it undercuts many comparable 1U rack units while still offering 2x 10Gb SFP+ plus a separate 1GbE management port, 4 hot swap bays for 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch drives, and 2 M.2 NVMe slots for read and write caching. In testing with 4 HDDs in RAID 5 over 10GbE, it delivered strong real-world file transfer results for a small SATA array, with synthetic benchmarks showing high peak throughput but some variability depending on the tool used, and the platform’s power draw and noise profile were heavily influenced by drive choice and fan mode, including very loud output if maximum cooling is forced. UniFi Drive covers the core fundamentals expected at this level, including snapshots, encrypted volumes, and a wide range of backup targets (NAS, SMB, and multiple cloud services, with Microsoft 365 direction evident in recent updates), but the interface still limits deeper tuning in places and the feature set remains focused on storage rather than apps. The main downsides are structural and easy to identify up front: NVMe can only be used for cache rather than storage pools, the NVMe carriers are an extra purchase, there are no USB ports for local copy tasks, the PSU is internal and not a hot swap module, and missing features like iSCSI, ECC, and RAM upgradability place a clear ceiling on more advanced workloads, though those trade-offs are broadly consistent with a $499 ‘turnkey’ NAS appliance in 2026 though and hard to criticise!

BUILD QUALITY - 9/10

HARDWARE - 7/10

PERFORMANCE - 7/10

PRICE - 9/10

VALUE - 10/10

8.4

PROS

Dual 10Gb SFP+ networking is unusual in a 1U 4 bay NAS at this price point + failover will not result in bandwidth throttle

A separate 1GbE port is useful for management or fallback connectivity

1U chassis with relatively short depth is easier to fit in smaller racks and cabinets

Rails and rack hardware included, reducing extra setup cost and friction

Ubiquiti and UniFi online/brand services are optional (i.e pure offline/LAN is possible)+ no need for a Ubiquiti/UniFi network setup to use

NVMe read and write caching support can improve responsiveness in mixed workloads

UniFi Drive provides snapshots, encryption, and a broad set of backup targets (NAS, SMB, and multiple cloud providers)

Setup and management are streamlined, especially for users already running UniFi infrastructure

Drive 4.0 Update scales up the Business Utilities notably

CONS

NVMe is cache only, with no option to use M.2 drives as primary storage pools

NVMe trays or carriers are not included, adding extra cost and an extra purchase step

Single PSU (no redundency) and non-slide removable SFX/ATX PSU (relies on propriatary UniFi Battery Backup rack module or external UPS)

No NAS Expansion Support, so 4 HDDs are your limit

Here are all the current UniFi NAS Solutions & Prices:

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 (4 Bay + 2x M.2, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 2 (2 Bay, $199) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 4 (4 Bay + 2x M2, $379) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro (7 Bay, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 8 (8-Bay + 2x M.2, $799) HERE

You can buy the UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS via the link below – doing so will result in a small commission coming to me and Eddie at NASCompares, and allows us to keep doing what we do!

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Design & Storage

The UNAS Pro 4 uses a conventional 1U rack mount layout, with a plain, functional front panel and an all metal enclosure intended for permanent installation rather than desktop use. It ships with rails and rack handles, which removes the usual extra step of sourcing mounting hardware separately. The chassis depth is about 400 mm, so it is not in the “full depth server” category, and that helps in smaller cabinets where rear clearance and cable management space can be limited.

Across the front are 4 hot swap bays supporting both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch SATA drives. The trays are set up for tool-less 3.5 inch HDD installation with a click-in fit, while 2.5 inch SSDs still require screws to secure them properly. Each bay has status lighting, and the front panel also provides system level indicators so you can identify basic state and drive activity at a glance without logging into the interface. The trays feel rigid and spring-loaded, but they are not lockable, which is a practical consideration if the unit is placed in a shared rack or anywhere physical access is not strictly controlled.

From a capacity and planning perspective, this system is defined by its fixed 4 bay layout. You can configure a conventional RAID group within those bays, but there is no built-in path to scale beyond the internal slots, and there is no supported external expansion shelf option to push the same chassis further later on. That means the decision on drive sizes and redundancy level matters upfront, because the ceiling is reached quickly compared with higher bay count rack units. In a small rack deployment, it also means the unit is either a compact standalone store or part of a broader multi-NAS approach rather than a single box that grows over time.

In addition to the SATA bays, the chassis supports 2 M.2 NVMe slots intended specifically for SSD caching. The caching model is designed to accelerate HDD-based storage by using SSDs as a performance layer, rather than allowing NVMe drives to become their own primary pool for general file storage. Practically, that positions the NVMe feature as a supplement for mixed workloads, such as improving responsiveness for frequently accessed data and smoothing write behavior, rather than a route to running the system as a small all flash NAS.

A design detail that affects the storage experience is the physical NVMe mounting method. Instead of a simple screw-down slot on a board, the NVMe drives are installed via a tray or carrier mechanism, and that carrier is not included with the base unit. The carrier itself is neatly engineered with a clip-in style insertion and thermal padding, and it supports common M.2 lengths including 2280 and 22110, but requiring an additional part adds friction if caching is part of the plan from day 1. It is a small issue, but it is the kind of detail that can slow down an otherwise straightforward deployment.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Internal Hardware

The UNAS Pro 4 is built around a quad core ARM Cortex-A57 CPU clocked at 2.0 GHz and paired with 8 GB of memory, which sets expectations for the type of workloads it is designed to handle. This is not a platform aimed at heavyweight compute tasks, but for file services and scheduled backup activity it has enough headroom to keep the system responsive, particularly when multiple users are accessing shared folders and snapshots are being taken in the background.

The CPU choice also reflects a focus on predictable appliance behavior and lower overall platform complexity rather than maximum expandable performance.

Internally, the power system is a single 150 W unit mounted inside the chassis rather than a hot swap module, which influences servicing and downtime planning. If the PSU fails, replacement is more involved than swapping an external canister, and that is a meaningful difference compared with rack systems that use easily replaceable redundant modules.

The unit does, however, support UniFi’s USP-RPS DC input as an alternative redundancy method, which changes the redundancy approach from “dual PSU in the chassis” to “centralized redundant supply for multiple devices,” with different trade-offs in cost, cabling, and rack layout.

A further internal design choice is how the system treats its software environment as a dedicated appliance rather than an OS sharing space with user storage. The system software runs on its own internal storage rather than living on the same disks that hold your data. In practical terms, that reduces the chance of the OS being affected by changes to the main array, and it can make maintenance tasks like drive replacement or pool rebuilds feel more self-contained, because the unit remains manageable even while the primary storage is under stress.

ARM-based NAS platforms typically bring some efficiency advantages, and this model follows that general pattern. The CPU class and memory configuration are aligned with lower baseline overhead than many x86 NAS designs, which can help keep idle draw and sustained power use in check relative to equivalent rack hardware, though drive choice still dominates the total. The trade-off is a lower performance ceiling compared with modern x86 systems for certain workloads, plus the usual limitations seen in this category: no practical RAM upgrade path, no ECC support, and fewer options for buyers who want to push beyond file services into heavier compute. At $499, those omissions are consistent with the target price bracket in 2026 rather than being unexpected corner cutting.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Ports and Connections

The rear connectivity is centered on 2x 10Gb SFP+ ports, and that is the defining hardware choice for this NAS in a 1U, 4 bay format. It allows the unit to be placed into a 10Gb environment without adapters, and it also opens up practical options beyond raw throughput, such as separating traffic types, connecting into different switches, or keeping a second path available for failover. The choice of SFP+ over 10GBase-T will suit users already running fiber or DAC links in a rack, but it can be less convenient for small setups built around copper RJ45.

Alongside the 10Gb ports is a separate 1GbE RJ45 port that can be used for management or for general connectivity in networks where 10Gb is not available everywhere. In a mixed UniFi environment, this is useful because it avoids tying basic onboarding and administration to a 10Gb port that might be better reserved for file traffic. It also gives a simple fallback path for access and troubleshooting if the 10Gb side is being reconfigured, moved between switches, or temporarily taken offline.

What is missing is just as relevant as what is included. There are no USB ports for quick ingest, offline copy tasks, or attaching temporary media, which some rack NAS platforms still provide for convenience even in 1U designs. Wireless is not a focus here, though Bluetooth is present for initial setup workflows, which fits the product’s “appliance onboarding” approach more than it does ongoing connectivity. The result is a port layout that prioritizes network-first storage and rack integration, while leaving out local expansion and quick-access I/O features that some users expect on a NAS.

However, (and I am sounding like a broken record at this point) at $499, these ports and connections are a notable degree more than most other turn-key NAS solutions from Synology, QNAP and even Terramaster (the more budget end of the NAS market already) are offering at under 500! So, what is presented here is a great value Day 1 solution in terms of base connectivity, but there is no denying that it might well feel the pinch in 5 years down the road when your storage is filling and your storage speeds begin to bottleneck vs your other equipment bandwidth.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Testing Noise, Temps, Power Consumption & Speed

Performance here needs to be framed around the physical limits of 4 SATA bays and the role of SSD caching. Even with dual 10Gb networking available, a 4 drive HDD array has a throughput ceiling that will be reached long before the network becomes the bottleneck in most single-client scenarios. The value of 10Gb in this context is less about hitting theoretical maximums and more about maintaining higher transfer rates consistently, handling multiple simultaneous users, and keeping latency lower when lots of smaller operations are happening alongside big file moves.

In testing with 4 HDDs in a RAID 5 configuration over a 10Gb link to a Windows 11 client, measured throughput landed in the range expected of a well-tuned 4 disk array. Using AJA with a repeated 1 GB test file, results sat around 680 to 730 MB/s for download and 520 to 600 MB/s for upload. A real-world Windows file transfer of 101 GB made up of 1,231 mixed files completed in 3 minutes and 57 seconds, which works out at an average of about 426 MB/s across the transfer, reflecting the usual drop from synthetic peak results when file variety and filesystem overhead are introduced.

Synthetic benchmarking results varied depending on the tool used, which is not unusual when caching behavior and test patterns differ. CrystalDiskMark with a 1 GB test file reported 353 MB/s read and 429 MB/s write in this run, with write coming out higher than read, which is atypical enough to treat as an outlier pending further retesting. ATTO produced stronger peak figures of 860 MB/s read and 570 MB/s write at the top end, which aligns more closely with the best-case behavior seen in sequential-focused tests on multi-drive arrays.

Noise, power draw, and thermal behavior were also measured because they affect rack placement and operating cost. With the fan profile set to auto and drives idle, noise sat around 42 to 44 dBA, dropping to roughly 38 to 40 dBA in the lowest RPM mode. Manually forcing maximum cooling pushed noise to around 56 to 57 dBA, and that level remained dominant even when drive activity increased, suggesting the cooling system prioritizes aggressive airflow when pushed. Power consumption with 4 enterprise HDDs measured roughly 49 to 50 W at idle and 60 to 62 W under activity, while swapping to 4 SATA SSDs reduced that to around 32 W during synchronization, underlining how drive choice can change the overall profile as much as the base platform.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Software and Services

The UNAS Pro 4 runs UniFi Drive and is managed through the same style of web interface used across the broader UniFi portfolio, with system status, storage, backups, and user access presented in a single dashboard. For basic NAS use, the core functions are in place: creating storage pools, managing shares, enabling file services, and monitoring drive health. The interface is generally structured around doing common tasks quickly rather than exposing every possible tuning option, which keeps setup approachable but also limits deeper control in areas that some experienced NAS users look for.

File access is centered on SMB and NFS, with browser-based file management available for basic upload, download, and folder navigation. The browser file manager covers the essentials and includes sharing link creation, but it is not positioned as a full productivity layer with advanced file handling or rich collaboration features. Remote access and identity-based access tools are tied into UniFi’s account and identity layer, and while local-only deployment is possible, the most integrated remote workflow is clearly designed around UniFi’s own services rather than third party remote networking tools.

Storage protection features include snapshot support, encrypted volumes, and configurable retention policies, which addresses most common rollback and recovery needs for file storage. Backup tooling covers several targets, including backing up to another UniFi NAS, to SMB targets, and to cloud services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi, with Microsoft 365 backup support also part of the broader UniFi Drive direction. These features reflect the brand’s recent focus on strengthening data protection rather than expanding into application hosting or media server style functionality.

The gaps are consistent with the product’s current scope. There is no iSCSI target support, which limits certain virtualization and block-storage workflows, and there is no container or VM layer for running third party services directly on the NAS. NVMe usage remains limited to caching rather than becoming its own storage pool, which narrows the performance paths available if the goal is to build a small all-flash volume.

Client-side tooling is also still limited compared with platforms that provide a dedicated sync-and-pin application, with access leaning on standard network shares and UniFi’s identity-driven access methods rather than a full drive-style client experience.

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 Review – Conclusion & Verdict

The UNAS Pro 4 is a focused 1U, 4 bay NAS that prioritizes networked file storage and straightforward deployment over broader application support. The hardware choices align with that goal: dual 10Gb SFP+ connectivity, 4 hot swap bays, and optional NVMe caching provide a platform that can deliver strong file transfer rates for a small array, while the ARM-based design keeps the system positioned as an appliance rather than a general-purpose server. Its main compromises are largely structural rather than hidden: fixed bay count with no expansion path, NVMe limited to cache, no USB I/O for local tasks, and a single internal PSU rather than a hot swap redundant design.

At $499, the value case is driven by how much rack-oriented networking is included at a price that undercuts many comparable 1U NAS systems, especially those offering 10Gb as standard. The software is usable for core storage tasks and has clearly improved over the last year in areas like snapshots and backup targets, but it still leaves out features that matter to some buyers, including iSCSI and a fuller client sync experience. For users who want a compact rack NAS primarily for SMB or NFS file storage with modern backup and snapshot features, it fits its role well; for users expecting a broader NAS app ecosystem or more hardware serviceability, the limitations are likely to be decisive. But, as Delboy once said, at this price, “what do you want? Jam on it?”. This system is giving more at this price than anyone else right now and for its limitations, for many these will be paletable in the grand scheme of things. 1U 4Bay rackmounts has always been something that most turnkey NAS brands treat poorly, due to the low saturation point of four SATA drives and why waste more capable hardware on that? In that sense, Ubiquiti is really piling on the hardware here at this price – and I for one applaud this.

Here are all the current UniFi NAS Solutions & Prices:

UniFi UNAS Pro 4 (4 Bay + 2x M.2, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 2 (2 Bay, $199) – HERE
UniFi UNAS 4 (4 Bay + 2x M2, $379) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro (7 Bay, $499) – HERE
UniFi UNAS Pro 8 (8-Bay + 2x M.2, $799) HERE

You can buy the UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS via the link below – doing so will result in a small commission coming to me and Eddie at NASCompares, and allows us to keep doing what we do!

PROs of the UniFi UNAS Pro 4 NAS

Dual 10Gb SFP+ networking is unusual in a 1U 4 bay NAS at this price point + failover will not result in bandwidth throttle
A separate 1GbE port is useful for management or fallback connectivity
1U chassis with relatively short depth is easier to fit in smaller racks and cabinets
Rails and rack hardware included, reducing extra setup cost and friction
Ubiquiti and UniFi online/brand services are optional (i.e pure offline/LAN is possible)+ no need for a Ubiquiti/UniFi network setup to use
NVMe read and write caching support can improve responsiveness in mixed workloads
UniFi Drive provides snapshots, encryption, and a broad set of backup targets (NAS, SMB, and multiple cloud providers)
Setup and management are streamlined, especially for users already running UniFi infrastructure
Drive 4.0 Update scales up the Business Utilities notably

NVMe is cache only, with no option to use M.2 drives as primary storage pools
NVMe trays or carriers are not included, adding extra cost and an extra purchase step
Single PSU (no redundency) and non-slide removable SFX/ATX PSU (relies on propriatary UniFi Battery Backup rack module or external UPS)
No NAS Expansion Support, so 4 HDDs are your limit

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