A battery powered and transportable community hooked up storage machine seems like a superb thought, however in early entry the UnifyDrive UT2 has a number of too many limitations to advocate it whole-heartedly.
Information storage is an enormous drawback for content material creators engaged on the go, or within the subject. When you can offload reminiscence playing cards or wait till you return to base, it could be higher to have the choice to do it whereas on location.
Exterior drives might also be seen as an apparent reply to the issue. However even then, you aren’t getting the advantages of redundancy in a multi-disk setup like a network-attached storage machine.
The UnifyDrive UT2, presently in crowdfunding, works round that by providing the usefulness of network-attached storage (NAS) whereas working remotely.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation: Slim, transportable, community hooked up storage
Most network-attached storage units are big 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 measurement 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 Sort B/A card slot, a USB-A port, and a USB-C connection.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation – Ports on the tip of the unit
The skin additionally has discrete vents on the perimeters. On the high edge, there’s a choice of indicator LEDs.
Because the port choice hints, there’s much more happening than this being a mere exterior drive.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation: Storage and efficiency
For a begin, it capabilities as a NAS, which suggests it has a pair of SSDs inside. It helps as much as 16TB, which is various capability for a transportable machine.
That is nice, however for a tool meant to be transportable and introduced into the sphere, the open vents millimeters away from the SSDs looks as if a nasty thought. All the level of “the field” is dust, particles, and probably water. Open vents in these environments aren’t nice.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation – Vents adjoining to the SSDs
The 2 SSDs might be configured to function in a number of modes, together with UDR, Single-Disk, and the mirroring of RAID1.
Utilizing the included ports, customers can shortly offload their information 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 information from their reminiscence playing cards to the machine and get again to work.
Our testing bore this out, for essentially 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 machine as a Wi-fi Hotspot, with about 75 megabytes per second learn and write to the drive.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation – SSD ports
When the unit is related to a bunch 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 evaluation: 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 machine’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 decide because it pertains to switch speeds, so stability your want for storage or information security.
That information is accessible to an iPhone consumer with an app. The app is okay — not fabulous — from a design and UI standpoint, however it will get the job finished.
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 steadily when not related to energy. This drawback didn’t manifest once we related the enclosure to exterior energy and our MacBook Air.
The storage scenario is considerably sophisticated. There are two storage swimming pools on the machine — Flash Drive mode, and NAS managed information.
In Flash Drive mode, the machine works as a regular exterior SSD. Information placed on the drive via the NAS performance are solely accessible to the NAS however to not an area host — however information 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 could possibly present entry to saved information to a number of customers. Wi-Fi vary is restricted, because the antennae are inside to the metal-clad machine.
There’s additionally Bluetooth 5 assist, however you are much less doubtless to make use of this for information transfers until you completely should.
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.
Happily, you possibly can configure an computerized and secure shutdown when the unit is not related to exterior energy.
Whereas the UnifyDrive UT2 could be very a lot a content material creator assist machine, it is also helpful relating to content material consumption. You may join a show or headset to it by way of USB-C Show port, or to the HDMI port, after which play media straight from the machine.
This contains having the ability to play again 4K motion pictures with HDR, and even 8K movies. And it comes with a wi-fi distant!
It is actually no Apple TV set-top field, which is nice and dangerous. The media participant included, like each different characteristic within the app, is clunky, however it works, and the machine’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 all people, an Apple TV field can be higher. Nevertheless, for the goal cell skilled market, the native codec assist is a huge plus.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation: Greater than an exterior drive
I needed this to be higher than it’s, however this can be a solvable drawback with time. The UnifyDrive UT2 is an attention-grabbing machine, with good {hardware} — however with basically poor software program as previewed for us.
The UnifyDrive UT2 tries to resolve an issue creatives can typically run into, which is nice! On the identical time, it delivers a transportable information storage machine that gives redundancy and quite a lot of NAS-like accessibility, which can be good.
However, the software program that’s completely required to make use of that is fairly dangerous. And, additionally horrible is how the native storage versus community storage swimming pools are dealt with.
With all this mentioned, this product because it stands at the moment targets a really slim set of consumers. If in case you have a dependable supply of exterior energy, take a completely absurd quantity of images that you just need to offload wirelessly in a (relative) hurry, and have to do all of it in a small package deal, then the UnifyDrive UT2 is superb now.
It really works fairly properly as a media participant you could hook up with a TV for a resort keep. At $599 plus the price of storage at retail, it is extremely spendy for that use.
However, it is too gradual for storing video because it data. Even transferring large film information within the subject can be arduous.
All people else ought to cling on a bit and see what updates the corporate will make to the machine’s firmware and successfully necessary app. There are simply too many compromises proper now for me to wholeheartedly advocate the UnifyDrive UT2 to greater than that exact market as of early October 2024.
We’ll re-evaluate this when the machine ships and the software program has been up to date a number of occasions.
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation – Professionals
- Good SD and CF card assist
- Actively cooled
- 2.5-gigabit Ethernet connection
UnifyDrive UT2 evaluation – 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 necessary app is just not good. In any respect.
Ranking: 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 challenge is just not assured. We don’t cowl Kickstarters for which we shouldn’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 looking for $20,000, and that line is way behind the place funding stands at current.
