A battery powered and transportable community connected storage gadget seems like a superb thought, however in early entry the UnifyDrive UT2 has just a few too many limitations to advocate it whole-heartedly.
Knowledge storage is a giant drawback for content material creators engaged on the go, or within the subject. Whilst you can offload reminiscence playing cards or wait till you return to base, it will be higher to have the choice to do it whereas on location.
Exterior drives can also be seen as an apparent reply to the issue. However even then, you do not get the advantages of redundancy in a multi-disk setup like a network-attached storage gadget.
The UnifyDrive UT2, presently in crowdfunding, works round that by providing the usefulness of network-attached storage (NAS) whereas working remotely.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate: Slim, transportable, community connected storage
Most network-attached storage gadgets are large and heavy. The thought of the UT2 is that it’s a NAS that is additionally extremely transportable and battery-powered.
The UnifyDrive UT2 has an aluminum enclosure guarded by a silicone bumper. It has many design cues taken from different exterior drives.
This features a comparatively compact dimension of 6.7 inches by 3.3 inches and 0.8 inches thick. The ends are the place the ports are positioned, with one together with a USB-C port for energy, 2.5Gb Ethernet, HDMI, and an influence button. The opposite finish has an SD/TF card slot, a CFe Kind B/A card slot, a USB-A port, and a USB-C connection.
The skin additionally has discrete vents on the perimeters. On the high edge, there’s a collection of indicator LEDs.
Because the port choice hints, there’s much more occurring than this being a mere exterior drive.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate: Storage and efficiency
For a begin, it capabilities as a NAS, which implies it has a pair of SSDs inside. It helps as much as 16TB, which is various capability for a transportable gadget.
That is nice, however for a tool supposed to be transportable and introduced into the sphere, the open vents millimeters away from the SSDs looks as if a nasty thought. Your complete level of “the sphere” is filth, particles, and probably water. Open vents in these environments aren’t nice.
The 2 SSDs may be configured to function in just a few modes, together with UDR, Single-Disk, and the mirroring of RAID1.
Utilizing the included ports, customers can shortly offload their knowledge from reminiscence playing cards to the onboard drives.
UnifyDrive claims it’s able to SD card learn and write speeds of 312MB/s, with CFe learn and write speeds additionally at 312MB/s. This could imply that photographers and videographers can shortly dump knowledge from their reminiscence playing cards to the gadget and get again to work.
Our testing bore this out, for probably the most half.
The SSDs are claimed to have write speeds of 769MB/s and reads of 813MB/s. We did not see even near that in any situation.
Utilizing a wi-fi LAN connection, we noticed transfers within the single-digit megabytes per second vary. That is vastly higher when utilizing the gadget as a Wi-fi Hotspot, with about 75 megabytes per second learn and write to the drive.
When the unit is related to a number in Flash Drive mode, we noticed about 315 megabytes per second learn and write, no matter whether or not the unit’s drives are in mirrored or efficiency format.
Good, not nice — and never near marketed speeds.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate: Connectivity and options
To drive the unit, there’s the Rockchip RK3588C, an ARM chip with an 8-core CPU, a G610 GPU, and an NPU able to 6 trillion operations per second. It additionally has 8GB of reminiscence and 32GB eMMC flash storage for the gadget’s software program and settings.
Storage is offered by a pair of M.2 2280 SSDs, permitting for as much as 16TB of native storage. The free app permits for mirroring or efficiency choices. It does not appear to matter which mode you choose because it pertains to switch speeds, so stability your want for storage or knowledge security.
That knowledge is accessible to an iPhone consumer with an app. The app is okay — not fabulous — from a design and UI standpoint, nevertheless it will get the job completed.
The USB-C port can be utilized to attach the UnifyDrive UT2 to an area host, like a MacBook Professional. We had points with this, with the unit disconnecting often when not related to energy. This drawback didn’t manifest once we related the enclosure to exterior energy and our MacBook Air.
The storage state of affairs is considerably sophisticated. There are two storage swimming pools on the gadget — Flash Drive mode, and NAS managed recordsdata.
In Flash Drive mode, the gadget works as a normal exterior SSD. Information placed on the drive via the NAS performance are solely accessible to the NAS however to not an area host — however recordsdata moved via Flash Drive mode can be found to each.
This feels unusual and pointless. We’re hoping for a repair in software program after launch.
Since it may be hooked as much as the community over Ethernet and act as its personal restricted Wi-Fi 6 entry level, it will possibly present entry to saved knowledge to a number of customers. Wi-Fi vary is proscribed, because the antennae are inside to the metal-clad gadget.
There’s additionally Bluetooth 5 assist, however you are much less possible to make use of this for knowledge transfers until you completely must.
In a location with dodgy energy, a built-in battery acts as an actively cooled, uninterruptable energy provide.
Do not depend on that battery for a very long time, although. With out exterior energy, the corporate says it lasts for about an hour. Our testing proved it to be nearer to a half-hour.
Thankfully, you possibly can configure an automated and protected shutdown when the unit is not related to exterior energy.
Whereas the UnifyDrive UT2 may be very a lot a content material creator assist gadget, it is also helpful in the case of content material consumption. You may join a show or headset to it through USB-C Show port, or to the HDMI port, after which play media immediately from the gadget.
This contains with the ability to play again 4K motion pictures with HDR, and even 8K movies. And it comes with a wi-fi distant!
It is definitely no Apple TV set-top field, which is sweet and unhealthy. The media participant included, like each different characteristic within the app, is clunky, nevertheless it works, and the gadget’s software program has restricted metadata search options.
As a bonus, it additionally has assist for a wider array of codecs in video than the Apple TV field has, and assist for as much as 8K video.
For nearly everyone, an Apple TV field shall be higher. Nevertheless, for the goal cellular skilled market, the native codec assist is a huge plus.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate: Greater than an exterior drive
I wished this to be higher than it’s, however it is a solvable drawback with time. The UnifyDrive UT2 is an fascinating gadget, with good {hardware} — however with essentially poor software program as previewed for us.
The UnifyDrive UT2 tries to resolve an issue creatives can generally run into, which is nice! On the identical time, it delivers a transportable knowledge storage gadget that gives redundancy and a number of NAS-like accessibility, which can be good.
However, the software program that’s completely required to make use of that is fairly unhealthy. And, additionally horrible is how the native storage versus community storage swimming pools are dealt with.
With all this stated, this product because it stands as we speak targets a really slim set of consumers. In case you have a dependable supply of exterior energy, take a fully absurd quantity of photographs that you simply wish to offload wirelessly in a (relative) hurry, and must do all of it in a small bundle, then the UnifyDrive UT2 is great now.
It really works fairly nicely as a media participant that you may hook up with a TV for a lodge keep. At $599 plus the price of storage at retail, it is extremely spendy for that use.
However, it is too sluggish for storing video because it data. Even transferring huge film recordsdata within the subject shall be arduous.
All people else ought to cling on a bit and see what updates the corporate will make to the gadget’s firmware and successfully obligatory app. There are simply too many compromises proper now for me to wholeheartedly advocate the UnifyDrive UT2 to greater than that specific market as of early October 2024.
We’ll re-evaluate this when the gadget ships and the software program has been up to date just a few instances.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate – Professionals
- Good SD and CF card assist
- Actively cooled
- 2.5-gigabit Ethernet connection
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluate – Cons
- Spendy for what you get, not even together with storage
- Not what you’d name rugged for a tool that is supposed for use within the subject
- The successfully obligatory app is just not good. In any respect.
Score: 3 out of 5
The place to purchase the UnifyDrive UT2
As of October 3, the UnifyDrive UT2 is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Supply of any crowdfunded mission is just not assured. We don’t cowl Kickstarters for which we don’t have the {hardware}.
For a restricted time, a $399 pledge on Kickstarter will get you {hardware} when it ships. It’s anticipated to retail for $599. The corporate was searching for $20,000, and that line is much behind the place funding stands at current.