Tag Archives: nas

Minisforum N5 Air 7640 makes room for upgrades with a slide-out motherboard

Posted on by

Your photo archive doesn’t stop growing just because its storage box has run out of room. The Minisforum N5 Air 7640 approaches that familiar problem with five drive bays and a motherboard that slides out for upgrades. This network-attached storage device, or NAS, gives owners a way to revisit what’s inside without treating the enclosure like a puzzle they’re supposed to leave unsolved.

There’s little on the outside to advertise that mechanical trick. Rounded corners soften a dark plastic shell measuring 7.8 by 8.0 by 9.9 inches. A broad front cover conceals the drive trays, while the power button, status lights, and USB ports occupy a narrow strip below. The arrangement keeps everyday connections accessible without leaving five drive handles competing for attention on your desk.

Designer: Minisforum

Open it up, however, and the distinction between storage access and computer maintenance becomes clearer. The hard drives have their own front-facing trays, while the motherboard travels forward on a separate sliding assembly beneath them. Minisforum carries this layout over from the earlier N5 Air. Its appeal is straightforward enough: memory and SSD upgrades don’t require dismantling the entire box around them.

That matters when a simple family archive starts taking on other jobs. Two DDR5 memory slots accept up to 96GB of replaceable RAM, giving owners room to expand as they add applications or virtual machines. The six-core AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS processor handles the computing, with 12 threads available for concurrent tasks. You aren’t locked into the memory configuration you chose initially.

Storage follows a similar division of labor. Five SATA bays accommodate larger drives for accumulated photos and footage, while three M.2 slots provide space for solid-state storage. Minisforum advertises up to 174TB across both groups. That’s a raw capacity ceiling, not usable space after redundancy. The included 64GB system drive also occupies one M.2 slot, so those three positions aren’t all empty.

The rear connections leave room for the setup around it to grow, too. Separate 10GbE and 5GbE network ports offer faster wired links, although your computer and network equipment need to support those speeds. There’s also OCuLink for external expansion and an internal PCIe slot. Despite its x16 size, that slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth, an important distinction before choosing an upgrade.

The software brings those hardware options back to household routines. Minisforum’s MinisCloud OS offers photo organization, device backups, and separate personal and shared spaces, so family pictures needn’t share the same permissions as work documents. Docker support lets owners install additional applications. There is a caveat, though: Minisforum labels the operating system as beta software, something worth considering before entrusting it with irreplaceable files.

Minisforum lists the barebones model at $495, including that 64GB system drive but no RAM or data drives. The 16GB RAM version is listed at $679. Immediate stock and dispatch aren’t independently confirmed. Those additional hardware costs belong in the budget, but at least installing your chosen parts is something the enclosure was designed to accommodate, rather than quietly discourage.

The post Minisforum N5 Air 7640 makes room for upgrades with a slide-out motherboard first appeared on Yanko Design.

Flashstor 6 Gen2 Review: NAS Boxes Hide, This One Belongs on Your Desk

Posted on by

PROS:


  • Distinctive, futuristic aesthetic and compact design

  • Powerful specs and fast data transfer speeds

  • Quiet operation even with two fans

  • Six M.2 slots with possible HDD expansion

CONS:


  • Only fits M.2 2280 size

  • Premium pricing

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Flashstor 6 Gen2 delivers a powerful and modern NAS solution that doesn't need to be hidden away behind a monitor.
award-icon

Network storage boxes rarely earn a second glance, usually parked out of sight because nobody wants a black box cluttering the desk. The Flashstor 6 Gen2 changes that expectation on sight. ASUSTOR’s second-generation all-flash NAS wears an angled, faceted shell that reads more like a compact game console than a file server, all while housing six NVMe bays and 10GbE networking underneath its sculpted plastic body.

This is the follow-up to ASUSTOR’s original Flashstor 6, and the internals show a genuine generational jump. An AMD Ryzen Embedded processor, DDR5 memory, and PCIe Gen4 support replace the older, more modest hardware inside. Built with creatives, home lab tinkerers, and small studios in mind, the FS6806X invites judgment on more than raw speed, asking to be evaluated on how it looks and feels in daily use.

Designer: ASUSTOR

Aesthetics

The shell makes the boldest first impression. Rather than the usual squared-off box, ASUSTOR shaped the Flashstor 6 Gen2 with a slanted, almost parallelogram-like profile that leans to the side at an angle. That single geometric choice gives the whole unit a sense of motion even while sitting still on a shelf, setting it apart from nearly every other storage enclosure on the market today.

Look closer, and the finish adds even more character. One side of the enclosure wears a brushed metal effect, while the other carries a powder-coated texture, and the contrast between the two reads as a deliberate styling choice rather than an accident. Both finishes sit on a plastic shell rather than actual metal, so the material change is really just a clever coating trick.

A set of lines and grooves wraps from the front panel around to one side, and that detail carries most of the futuristic feel the design is going for. It breaks up what could have been a plain surface without resorting to loud branding or extra vents. Combined with the angled face and lighting, the overall impression lands closer to a gaming console than anything typically found on a NAS shelf.

Ergonomics

Size-wise, the Flashstor 6 Gen2 measures about 7.6 x 12.1 x 1.9 inches and weighs roughly 3.1 lbs, closer to a thick external drive than a typical NAS tower. Because every bay holds an SSD instead of a spinning disk, there’s no vibration and barely any audible hum, which makes it far easier to justify keeping the unit somewhere visible instead of banished to a closet or a rack in another room.

Getting inside isn’t as effortless as the sleek shell suggests. Reaching the M.2 slots means removing four screws on the bottom panel, though ASUSTOR doesn’t include a screwdriver in the box, so keep one handy. Once that panel is off, though, the slots themselves use a simple latch system, no tools needed to seat or remove an SSD. Getting to the RAM means removing even more screws, so that part takes a bit longer.

Connectivity tells a similar story of tradeoffs. Up front, there’s a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port for quick backups or grabbing files off an external drive. Everything else, including both USB4 Type-C ports, sits on the rear panel alongside the 10GbE jack, which means anyone who frequently swaps cables will be reaching around the back a lot. It’s a small inconvenience that trades off for a cleaner, less cluttered front face.

Performance

Underneath the shell sits an AMD Ryzen Embedded V3C14, a quad-core, eight-thread chip built on a 6-nanometer process with speeds reaching 3.8GHz, well ahead of the entry-level chips found in cheaper NAS boxes. It ships with 8GB of DDR5-4800 memory, expandable to 64GB across two SO-DIMM slots, and the platform supports ECC modules for anyone who upgrades, a detail that speaks to how seriously ASUSTOR treated the internals.

All six bays are built for M.2 NVMe drives running up to PCIe Gen4 x4, so there’s no bottleneck between the interface and the drive itself. Worth noting, the slots only fit the 2280 form factor, so shorter 2230, 2242, or 2260 drives can’t be mounted. Once populated, drives can be arranged into RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, or 10, formatted in either EXT4 or Btrfs.

That storage speed only matters if the network keeps pace, and the single 10GbE port earns its place here. Our own testing came close to ASUSTOR’s advertised figures, nearing 1,180 MB/s of sequential read/write in RAID 5 over that connection. The two USB4 Type-C ports add another route, offering up to 40Gbps per port for direct, network-free transfers.

One other significant upgrade from the Flashstor 6 gen2’s predecessor is the addition of a second cooling fan under the CPU. Given the higher processing power, that upgraded thermal management is very much warranted. But even with two fans, the NAS runs quiet, barely a murmur, adding to the appeal of putting the box somewhere visible yet unheard.

Software runs through ASUSTOR Data Master or ADM, the company’s operating system, with access to an app store covering everything from Docker containers to backup tools and media servers. If you ever decide to repurpose the NAS into a security hub someday, a handful of free surveillance camera channels will make that easier. The ADM also lets you control the speed of the fans, in case you prefer to sacrifice a bit of quiet for more aggressive cooling. And when six bays start to feel limiting, expansion units push the drive count up to 18, letting the platform grow past its footprint.

Sustainability

Going all-flash brings a few sustainability perks that are easy to miss at first glance. There are no spinning platters to wear down over years of use, less heat generated during typical workloads, and lower power draw than a comparable hard-drive NAS running the same hours. Support for ECC memory adds another layer of protection, catching data corruption before it becomes a bigger problem down the line.

The shell itself is plastic rather than metal, and it does flex a bit under pressure, a reminder of where costs were trimmed to keep the price reasonable. That’s not a huge deal-breaker, though it’s probably time for manufacturers to be more conscious of the materials they use, especially with storage solutions like NAS becoming more common even in personal use.

Value

The Flashstor 6 Gen2 sits in premium territory once six NVMe drives get factored into the total cost, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. At roughly $1,040.99 for the box alone, this isn’t a budget pick for someone who just wants basic file backup. The cost reflects the Ryzen platform, expandable memory, PCIe Gen4 support, USB4 ports, and 10GbE networking, all wrapped in a shell that looks intentional rather than purely utilitarian.

What makes that cost easier to accept is how consistently current every component feels. The processor, memory, storage interface, and networking are all genuinely up to date rather than propped up by one flashy spec while everything else lags behind. That balance means the storage never waits on the processor, and the network never becomes the bottleneck holding back six fast drives working together.

The people who get the most out of this are already running 10GbE networks, working with large creative files, or tinkering with containers and light virtualization. Anyone still on a 1GbE home setup with modest storage needs would leave a lot of this hardware idle, and a simpler hard-drive NAS would likely serve them better per terabyte spent. Matching the buyer to the platform matters here.

Verdict

Taken as a whole, the Flashstor 6 Gen2 pulls off something a lot of NAS makers don’t even attempt: hardware that’s current, wrapped in a shell that looks like someone in the design department actually cared. The rear-heavy port layout and screw-bound drive access take some getting used to, and the plastic build has a bit of give to it, but neither issue undercuts what ASUSTOR built here.

Creators, home lab tinkerers, and anyone assembling a fast, quiet storage setup will find hardware that keeps pace with its own ambitions in the FS6806X. It asks for a commitment of both budget and desk space, but in return it hands back a machine that doesn’t need to be hidden away behind a monitor. Few storage boxes manage to earn a place in plain sight quite like this one does.

The post Flashstor 6 Gen2 Review: NAS Boxes Hide, This One Belongs on Your Desk first appeared on Yanko Design.

Cloud AI Means Someone Else Has Your Data, MINISFORUM Fixes That

Posted on by

Running a serious AI model at home usually means renting someone else’s cloud server and hoping your data stays private along the way. MINISFORUM built its newest pairing to remove that trade-off entirely. The AI Agent NAS N5 MAX-P495 and AI Mini Workstation MS-S1 MAX-P495 combine for up to 131 TOPS of AI compute performance, 192GB of memory at 8533 MT/s, and up to 160GB of graphics memory, enough headroom to keep the heavy lifting on a desk instead of in a data center.

The N5 MAX-P495 takes the shape of a compact black cube, but what it holds inside matters more than how it looks sitting on a shelf. It combines powerful AI computing with up to 200TB of local storage, enabling users to store, manage, and process large volumes of data within a single AI platform. That capacity turns a spare corner of an office into a private archive large enough to hold years of project files, footage, or research without ever touching a third-party server.

Designer: MINISFORUM

Storage alone doesn’t make an AI system useful, so MINISFORUM built the N5 to run the AI itself. From RAG knowledge bases and AI models to embeddings, databases, and AI agents such as OpenClaw and Hermes, N5 MAX-P495 keeps data and AI workloads local, enabling continuous and private AI operations. A small business could lean on that setup to run its own customer-support agent without routing conversations through an outside company’s servers.

That local-first approach extends to how the N5 fits into a larger setup. Designed to work alongside AI computing devices, N5 MAX-P495 serves as a centralized backend for data, models, knowledge, and long-running AI workloads, bringing storage and computing together at the edge. It’s less a standalone gadget and more a quiet engine room, built to keep working in the background while something faster handles the parts people actually interact with.

That faster half of the pairing is the MS-S1 MAX-P495, a compact tower wrapped in a ventilated, diamond-textured front panel that looks more like a piece of desk sculpture than a workstation. It delivers powerful local AI computing for demanding model inference, AI development, and computationally intensive workloads, built for intensive local AI tasks, engineering, and workflows in an ultra-compact footprint. Developers get workstation-class muscle without giving up desk space to a full tower case.

Speed matters just as much as raw power for certain jobs, and MINISFORUM designed the MS-S1 with that in mind. Designed for low-latency AI workloads, MS-S1 MAX-P495 enables responsive local inference for AI agents, computer vision, generative AI, and other real-time applications. A security camera system or a live creative tool built on generative AI benefits directly from that kind of immediate response instead of waiting on a round trip to the cloud.

Connectivity rounds out the workstation’s role in a larger setup. With extensive connectivity and expansion capabilities, MS-S1 MAX-P495 serves as a powerful AI compute frontend, supporting models, applications, and connected devices across flexible edge AI environments. That flexibility means the same box can sit at the center of a home lab or plug into a small studio’s existing hardware without forcing a rebuild.

Paired together, the two devices split the work the way a good team would. The MS-S1 MAX-P495 and N5 MAX-P495 form a complete edge AI computing system, delivering high-performance AI compute at the frontend while integrating compute, massive storage, data, and AI knowledge at the backend, providing a powerful foundation for real-time inference, persistent AI workloads, and scalable local AI applications. It’s a compact answer to a question more households and small teams are starting to ask: whether AI still needs to live somewhere else at all.

The post Cloud AI Means Someone Else Has Your Data, MINISFORUM Fixes That first appeared on Yanko Design.

ZimaBoard 2 Review: The Home Server You Don’t Have to Hide Anymore

Posted on by

PROS:


  • Unusually sleek, well-finished aluminum design for a board-style server

  • Effectively silent passive cooling for always-on use

  • 60W adapter (with multiple plug types) provides sufficient 12V/5A power

  • Intuitive ZimaOS web interface, easy to set up without Linux experience

  • PCIe 3.0 x4 slot allows meaningful expansion


CONS:


  • Not suited for heavy compute or multi-VM workloads

  • Onboard eMMC is slow for sustained data storage

  • Memory tops out at 16 GB

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The ZimaBoard 2 offers a compact, always-on server that earns its place on the shelf both functionally and aesthetically.

award-icon

Home servers and NAS boxes have long had a visibility problem, and not in the marketing sense. Most are bulky, noisy, and purely functional, which means they usually end up tucked behind desks or buried in closets. The compact options that do exist often sacrifice connectivity, storage support, or OS flexibility, making them useful only on paper rather than in the kind of sustained, always-on role they’re meant to fill.

ZimaBoard 2 from IceWhale is trying to change that. It’s a compact x86 home server built around an industrial aluminum chassis, with enough connectivity and software flexibility to serve as a NAS, media server, smart home hub, or private cloud device. Available in two configurations starting from $279, it sits comfortably between a hobbyist board computer and a proper home server, and that positioning is genuinely worth exploring.

Designer: IceWhale

Aesthetics

Most board-style computers aren’t particularly elegant things. They’re open PCBs with exposed components and color-coded connectors, designed for function over form. ZimaBoard 2 is a notable exception. It comes housed in an all-aluminum enclosure with a clean silver finish and vertical cooling fins running along its length, giving it an almost architectural character that’s genuinely unusual for hardware in this category.

The ribbed fin pattern isn’t purely decorative. It acts as a passive heatsink, keeping things cool while also giving the device a more resolved visual quality than the typical bare-PCB look. It’s compact enough to hold in one hand, and in a workspace context, it reads less like raw server hardware and more like a deliberate industrial object that wouldn’t look out of place on a well-specced desk.

What also sets it apart from other board computers is how the I/O is handled at a design level. The ports are grouped cleanly along one edge, with the dual Ethernet jacks, USB ports, and Mini DisplayPort sitting in a tidy, intentional cluster rather than scattered wherever there was board space. That considered layout keeps the device looking organized even when several cables are plugged in at once.

Ergonomics

Setting up ZimaBoard 2 is refreshingly straightforward for a device in this category. The web-based interface felt clean, well-organized, and intuitive enough that getting started didn’t require much Linux familiarity. ZimaOS comes pre-installed with a browser-based dashboard that handles storage configuration, app deployment, and network settings through a familiar, point-and-click experience. Getting a NAS or media server up takes minutes, not hours.

The board is compact and light enough to tuck almost anywhere. It ships with a 60 W power adapter that comes with interchangeable plug adapters, which is a thoughtful detail for anyone working across different countries or regions. ZimaBoard 2 is designed around passive cooling, so in everyday use, it stays effectively silent, even with the optional mini cooling fan, which matters considerably when the device is meant to operate around the clock.

One practical setup step worth noting is that the onboard eMMC storage is best treated as a system layer rather than a long-term data destination. After initial setup, moving files and apps to the SATA-connected drives is the smarter workflow, since attached storage is faster and better suited to the sustained read and write activity a home server handles daily. It’s a minor but worthwhile habit to build in early.

Performance

Under the aluminum shell sits an Intel N150 processor, a quad-core chip running up to 3.6 GHz with a 6 MB cache and a 10 W TDP. It’s not the most powerful chip in this size class, but it’s the right pick for a device designed to run continuously at low power. For home server tasks, including NAS, media streaming, and containerized workloads, it handles things with comfortable ease.

On the storage side, two SATA 3.0 ports come with integrated power support, making it straightforward to connect a pair of full-size NAS drives without extra adapters. Running two 3.5-inch drives caused no issues, and the 12V, 5A supply proved sufficient in testing to handle the board and drives comfortably. That power budget is a meaningful detail, since not every compact server can make the same claim confidently.

Thermals are worth touching on separately. The N150 runs warm under sustained loads, but for NAS-oriented use, there’s a simple tuning option: disabling Turbo Boost in the BIOS noticeably reduces operating temperatures. The trade-off is a clock speed ceiling of around 1 GHz, but for straightforward file serving, that’s more than sufficient, and the lower heat output makes for a much more comfortable long-term operating condition.

Beyond the hardware, ZimaOS adds real depth to the experience. Its app store advertises 800+ one-click apps, including Plex, Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant. The higher 1664 configuration’s 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM also helps when running virtual machines or heavier container setups. ZimaOS also supports Intel Quick Sync for hardware-accelerated transcoding, which helps reduce CPU load in supported Plex and Jellyfin setups.

Sustainability

The all-aluminum enclosure makes a strong durability argument. Aluminum doesn’t flex, doesn’t yellow, and holds up well over years of continuous operation, which matters a great deal for hardware that never really gets switched off. The thermal design relies primarily on passive conduction through the chassis, keeping internal component complexity low and reducing the number of parts that could wear out over time.

Software longevity is another angle worth considering. Because ZimaBoard 2 runs on x86 architecture, it’s compatible with a wide range of operating systems, meaning the hardware doesn’t become obsolete when a software stack changes or no longer fits your needs. If ZimaOS evolves or you outgrow it, you can simply install something else. That kind of platform openness is a practical form of sustainability that closed appliances rarely offer.

Value

ZimaBoard 2 sits at a price point that demands a bit of context. The base 832 configuration starts at $279, with the 1664 variant at $349. Those figures feel steep when compared to bare-board computers, but the comparison isn’t really fair. What you’re getting is a fully enclosed x86 server module with dual 2.5 GbE networking, dual powered SATA bays, a PCIe 3.0 expansion slot, and ZimaOS pre-installed.

Compact mini PCs at a similar price usually offer stronger raw performance but fewer server-specific ports and no expansion path. Dedicated NAS boxes tend to be locked into proprietary software. ZimaBoard 2 is more flexible than either. Native SATA, dual 2.5 GbE, and a PCIe slot on a single platform is an uncommon combination at this price, and that’s where the value case starts to feel convincing.

The PCIe 3.0 x4 slot adds a dimension of future-proofing that sealed appliances can’t match. You can plug in a 10 GbE network card, an NVMe adapter, a GPU for AI workloads, or an HBA for expanding storage capacity. That expandability means you’re not locked into what the board offers at purchase, which in practical terms allows the device to grow alongside your needs rather than becoming a bottleneck.

It’s fair to say that buyers focused purely on maximum compute per dollar will find stronger options elsewhere. But for those building a quiet, flexible, always-on home server that’s actually pleasant to live with, ZimaBoard 2 feels well-judged. The design, connectivity, software experience, and room to grow all reinforce each other in a way that makes the price feel more grounded the longer you use it.

Verdict

ZimaBoard 2 makes a strong case for what compact home server hardware can look like when design is treated as part of the brief. It’s quiet, well-built, and easier to set up than most things in this category. Running as a NAS, a smart home hub, a media server, or all three at once, it handles each task without calling attention to itself, which is exactly what good infrastructure does.

The platform’s real strength is how many things it can become. Add a pair of NAS drives, and you’ve got a whisper-quiet personal cloud. Plug something into the PCIe slot, and the possibilities multiply further. It isn’t built for users chasing peak benchmarks, but for those who want a compact, always-on server that earns its place on the shelf both functionally and aesthetically, it’s a genuinely well-considered piece of hardware.

The post ZimaBoard 2 Review: The Home Server You Don’t Have to Hide Anymore first appeared on Yanko Design.

Your Personal Free Netflix and other Top 5 Tech you Absolutely Need in 2026

Posted on by

Last year I put together a list of products everyone absolutely needed to own in 2025. It included basic stuff, AirTags, GaN chargers, and even some slightly complex gadgets like NAS devices to help you cut the cord on cloud storage subscriptions. This year’s list expands on the same philosophy from last year – make life easier, cheaper, and faster. Here are 5 pieces of tech you need to consider owning in 2026, they’re on the bleeding edge of tech now, but I assume will become mainstream in a decade. However, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, consider adopting them now!

The list is short but sweet – it includes AI recorders/notetakers, translator buds that do a way better job than the AirPods, personal AQI monitors, travel routers that make connecting to dubious airport and hotel WiFi networks much easier, and finally (my grand pick for 2026) a personal media server that helps you actually own movies instead of paying Netflix or Hulu or Paramount a monthly fee that they seem to increase every year without batting an eyelid.

1. AI Notetakers: Your Second Brain That Actually Shows Up

There is a very real advantage to having a dedicated AI notetaker that is not your phone. Phones are distraction machines; they are notifications, doomscrolling, unsolicited ads, and “sorry, I just need to reply to this Slack” all rolled into one. A device like Plaud Note, Comulytic, Mobvoi’s TicNote or a Notta‑powered recorder does one thing: it listens (and it remembers what it listens). You hit a physical button, drop it on the table, and forget about it. Later, the audio is cleaned up, transcribed, summarized, and tagged without you babysitting the process. That separation alone changes how you behave in meetings and interviews. You stop half‑typing notes while someone is talking and instead stay present, knowing you will get a clean transcript and a decent summary afterward.

The other big win is what happens after the recording. Tools like Plaud, Notta, and similar AI‑first platforms are not just dumping a raw audio file into your storage; they are turning it into something you can actually work with. Meetings become bullet‑point action lists, interviews turn into structured quotes you can drop into drafts, and keynotes morph into highlight reels and to‑do items. Compare that to your phone’s stock voice recorder, where everything is just “Recording 032.m4a” in a long, unlabeled list. No speaker separation, no smart search, no summaries, no automatic organization. Dedicated AI notetakers treat audio as input to a workflow, not a dead file. And once you have used one a few times for client calls or field interviews, going back to a generic phone app feels like going from a modern IDE back to Notepad.

2. Translator Earbuds: When You Actually Need To Talk To People

Apple adding Live Translation to AirPods is very on‑brand: take a niche idea, wrap it in a clean UI, and ship it as a feature most people will try once in a while. It is genuinely handy if you and the other person both live inside the Apple ecosystem, and you are somewhere with good connectivity. But at the end of the day, AirPods are music‑first earbuds that happen to do translation on the side. Brands like Vasco, Viaim, and Timekettle flips that completely. Timekettle products like the M3, WT2 Edge, and W4 are built as translation devices first, earbuds second. The hardware, the app, and the interaction modes are all tuned for one job: two‑way, face‑to‑face conversation that does not feel like you are dictating into Google Translate.

You see the difference the minute you try to use them in the real world. Timekettle lets both people wear an earbud and just talk, with the system handling two‑way interpretation in near real time. Even Vasco, which secured our award at CES 2025, offers incredible translation features with the added ability to clone your voice using AI. There are specific modes for sitting across a café table, walking side by side, or listening to an announcement, and you can preload offline language packs so you are not stranded the moment you lose data. That matters when you are in a noisy street market, on a factory floor, or in a client meeting where “sorry, can you repeat that for the app” gets old fast. AirPods’ live translation is clever, but it is still bolted onto a general‑purpose audio product, with limited languages and workflows that quietly assume ideal conditions. Dedicated translator earbuds are what you pack when you know you are going to be operating in another language for days at a stretch; AirPods translation is what you pull out when you are already there and hoping the feature is good enough.

3. Personal Air Monitors: The Little Box That Calls Out Bad Air

A personal air quality monitor is very different from the big purifier that sits in one corner of your living room. This is the pocketable version: a small, battery‑powered sensor that tracks things like CO₂, particulates, VOCs, temperature, and humidity, and comes with you everywhere. Think of the same mindset behind something like Goveelife or uHoo’s indoor monitors, but shrunk down into a device you can toss in a bag or park on your desk. The moment you start carrying one, patterns jump out. That “3 p.m. crash” in your home office often lines up perfectly with CO₂ quietly creeping past the point where your brain stops firing properly. The subway line that always gives you a headache is not just “crowded and stressful,” it is a mix of stale air and fine dust. Your favorite café might have great coffee and terrible ventilation, while the boring chain across the street quietly nails fresh air and lower CO₂.

Where this becomes essential is when you pair it with travel and health decisions. Instead of vaguely checking a city‑wide AQI number, you get hyper‑local readings: the actual air in your Airbnb bedroom, that underground bar, that coworking space with sealed windows. A personal monitor can be the thing that tells you “open a window now,” “today is an N95 day,” or “maybe do not work six hours straight in this meeting room.” It is not a glamorous gadget, but it quietly moves you from guessing to measuring. In a world of wildfire smoke, construction dust, packed trains, and increasingly sealed buildings, that shift feels very 2026: less “trust the vibes,” more “trust the numbers in your pocket.”

4. Travel Routers: Bring Your Own Internet, Not Just Your Own Laptop

TCL and Asus quietly made one of the most important travel gadgets last year: routers built to live in your bag instead of under your TV. On the surface they look like yet another little plastic box with antennas, but the use case is very different from the router you got from your ISP. These are “BYO infrastructure” for people who work, stream, and store their lives online. You plug them into sketchy hotel Ethernet or join them to the random café Wi‑Fi, and they spin up your own private, password‑protected network for your laptop, phone, handheld console, and whatever else you are carrying. Instead of each device logging into “Hotel_WiFi_3” separately and fighting through captive portals, everything just connects to your SSID, with your own password, your own settings, and your own rules.

The VPN side is where they really earn a place in a 2026 kit. A good travel router can automatically tunnel all your traffic through a VPN or back to your home network, so every device behind it inherits that protection without you installing clients and certificates on each one. That means you can sit on airport Wi‑Fi and still safely access your media server at home, your NAS, your work tools, or region‑locked services, all as if you were on your own couch. For digital nomads and frequent flyers, it also solves a bunch of annoying edge cases: game consoles and streaming sticks that hate captive portals, devices that do not support VPNs natively, hotel networks that limit the number of devices per room. The travel router becomes the one “client” the hotel sees, while you hang a whole personal LAN off the back of it. It is not a glamorous product, but once you have had a week where your entire setup rides on that one little box, it is hard to go back to trusting whatever router the hotel happened to bolt to the ceiling.

5. Personal Media Servers: Owning Your Movies In A World That Hates Ownership

The idea of “buying” a movie used to be straightforward. You paid for a DVD or Blu‑ray, you got a disc, and that disc was yours until it got scratched to death or you moved house and lost it. You could watch it a thousand times, lend it to a friend, rip it for convenience, whatever. The streaming era quietly rewrote that deal. You are not buying movies anymore, you are renting access. A title lives on Netflix or Max or whatever for a while, then licensing changes, mergers happen, some accountant decides to write it off, and suddenly your favorite film or show just does not exist in your catalog. You can chase it across services, stacking subscriptions like trading cards, but that gets expensive very fast, and you are still at the mercy of contracts you never see.

A personal media server is the underdog rebellion against that. If you already have a NAS, you are basically one weekend away from rolling your own “Netflix” with something like Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby sitting on top. The workflow is not rocket science: buy discs, rip them, store the files on your NAS, let the media server scrape metadata and artwork, and suddenly you have a slick, searchable library that shows up on your TV, laptop, phone, or tablet just like a streaming app. The difference is that nothing disappears because a studio changed its mind. You decide what lives there, how long it stays, what version you keep, and who gets access. You can share that library with parents or siblings across the country without running into “password sharing crackdown” nonsense, and you can watch your stuff in a cabin with terrible internet because it is all local. It is the same basic promise we had with physical media, just updated for a world where your screen is no longer tethered to a disc player.

Now, the awkward bit: yes, pirating content is illegal. That is the line, and it is worth stating clearly. At the same time, the industry has created a situation where it is technically legal to charge you repeatedly for non‑ownership, while making entire catalogs vanish, region‑locking films behind arbitrary borders, and punishing you for sharing an account with your own family. When a bidding war over something like Warner Bros Discovery means one or two mega‑streamers get even more control over what exists where and for how long, it is hard not to see why people fall back on “if buying is not owning, piracy is not stealing” as a coping mechanism. I am not here to tell you what to do with torrents, but I will say this: a personal media server built around content you actually own is one of the few sane, future‑proof ways to make sure the movies and shows you care about are still watchable ten years from now. In a landscape that keeps trending toward bigger monopolies and weaker ownership, that box in the corner of your house starts to look less like a nerd toy and more like self‑defense.

The post Your Personal Free Netflix and other Top 5 Tech you Absolutely Need in 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

DigiEra OmniCore at CES 2026: NAS That Searches Files Like ChatGPT

Posted on by

For most designers and filmmakers, storage is the quiet problem that never gets a mood board. Projects start on phones, move through cameras and laptops, and end up scattered across drives and cloud folders that you half remember naming six months ago. CES 2026 is full of AI-driven devices and next-gen connectivity, but DigiEra’s booth is interesting because it treats storage as part of the creative environment, not just a spec to tick off on a spreadsheet.

The lineup tells a single story across four products. OmniCore is the modular, all-flash AI NAS that wants to be the studio’s private brain. Endura is the rugged field drive that can live in a bag without babying. Portable Hub SSD is the tiny block that turns a phone or camera into a serious capture and editing station. The Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD is the piece that lives on the back of an iPhone, turning storage into something closer to jewelry than IT gear.

Designer: DigiEra

OmniCore: AI NAS as a Private Studio Brain

The pain of hunting for assets across old drives and cloud accounts is real. OmniCore is DigiEra’s answer, a modular all-flash AI NAS designed to sit in a studio and quietly index everything. It supports up to 80 TB of SSD storage across eight 2.5-inch SATA bays and two M.2 slots, all hot-swappable, so the box can grow with a studio instead of being replaced every time a project spikes in size or a client asks for all the raw footage from three years ago.

OmniCore is not just a fast box of drives. A Rockchip RK3588 CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 6 TOPS NPU let it run AI tasks locally, from automatic image tagging and semantic search to transcription, document analysis, conversational chat, and clip generation. That means a designer can type “blue packaging concept with foil logo” and have the NAS surface relevant shots, instead of scrolling through folders named final underscore final underscore v3.

The privacy-first angle matters here. OmniCore is designed to work fully offline, with no cloud dependency, which is important when client work, unreleased campaigns, or personal archives cannot leave the building. Dual LAN ports, including 2.5 GbE, and Wi-Fi 6 support let it serve multiple editors or designers at once without feeling like a bottleneck, and Docker support means it can host custom tools alongside its own AI engine for people who need more than a basic file server.

The physical experience is part of the design. The cube-like form factor with front-loading SSD modules makes storage feel tangible and approachable, more like a card catalog than a server rack. Drives slide in and out on small trays, so expanding from a few terabytes to tens of terabytes is a matter of minutes, not a weekend migration project where everything has to stop. For small studios, that kind of modularity is as much a design decision as a technical one.

Endura Portable SSD: Rugged Speed with a Material Story

Endura is the drive that lives in the camera bag and follows people to shoots. DigiEra bills it as the world’s first portable SSD with an aluminum–carbon-fiber shell, rated IP65 for water, dust, and shock resistance. That combination of materials gives it a technical, motorsport-like feel, while also signaling that it can handle being tossed into a backpack, clipped to a rig, or dropped on a sidewalk without needing a protective case wrapped around a protective case.

Under the shell, Endura uses USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 over USB-C, delivering up to 2,000 MB/s read and 1,800 MB/s write speeds in capacities from 512 GB to 4 TB. For photographers dumping RAW stills between locations or filmmakers backing up cards on set, that means less time watching progress bars and more time shooting, with a drive that looks like it belongs in a design-conscious kit and can survive the environments where most shoots actually happen.

Portable Hub SSD: One Block to Replace the Dongle Pile

The Portable Hub SSD is the antidote to the usual tangle of hubs, drives, and chargers. It wraps the same 20 Gbps SSD core in a compact aluminum block that also acts as a hub, combining high-speed storage, PD fast charging, and extra USB-C connectivity. Plug it into a phone, tablet, or laptop, and it becomes both a scratch disk and an expansion port, turning one cable into a complete mobile workstation.

The fold-out USB-C plug and side ports make it particularly friendly to iPhones and USB-C cameras. Instead of hanging a drive and a hub off a gimbal or handheld rig, one block adds space for ProRes or LOG footage and passes power through to keep the phone or camera alive. For designers who sketch on tablets or edit on ultraportables, it is the kind of object that quietly simplifies the everyday carry, handling data and power from a single point without adding bulk or visual noise.

Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD: Storage as Visible Accessory

The Diamond Magnetic Portable SSD is the piece that never leaves the phone. It snaps magnetically to the back of an iPhone 15 or 16 Pro and records 4K 60 FPS ProRes video directly to external storage, lifting the ceiling on how long you can shoot without cages, rigs, or bulky battery grips. For content creators who rely on their phone as a primary camera, that is a big shift in what is possible with a pocket-sized setup.

The diamond-encrusted, circular design makes the drive look closer to a compact mirror or piece of jewelry than a tech accessory. Underneath, it still runs USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 over USB-C at up to 2,000 MB/s read and 1,800 MB/s write, in capacities up to 4 TB. That mix of performance and visual polish means it can stay on the phone in a meeting, a shoot, or a café without feeling out of place, turning storage into something you actually want to show rather than hide in a pocket until needed.

DigiEra at CES 2026: Turning Storage into a Creative Toolkit

OmniCore anchors the studio as a private, AI-enabled brain that knows where every file lives and can answer questions in natural language. Endura and Portable Hub SSD handle the messy middle, moving data safely and quickly between cameras, phones, and laptops, with materials and form factors that feel deliberate rather than generic. The Diamond Magnetic SSD lives on the phone, turning storage into something you actually want to show. That is DigiEra’s real story at CES 2026: storage treated not as an afterthought or a cloud subscription, but as a set of designed objects that respect the way creative work actually moves through the day, from the pocket to the field to the desk and back.

The post DigiEra OmniCore at CES 2026: NAS That Searches Files Like ChatGPT first appeared on Yanko Design.

Build your own NAS Cloud Drive using a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 3D Printer

Posted on by

Why pay for iCloud when you’ve got your own personal iCloud at home?!

Subscriptions will be the death of our civilization. Imagine not being able to ‘own’ something because a company only allows you to rent it. You don’t own the movies you pay for on Netflix, you don’t own the music you pay for on Spotify, and you can’t own storage on the cloud because even though you’re buying 500GB worth of space, you’re merely renting the space on a cloud server somewhere. This strange arrangement has led to the rise of personal NAS (Network-Attached Storage) devices, with people choosing to simply BUILD their own cloud storage devices instead of paying Apple, Google, or Microsoft for them. The advantages of a NAS are many – you don’t need to pay monthly fees, your cloud-drive is private to you so you don’t have to worry about Google or Apple getting hacked and your data getting leaked, but most importantly, you can store and access files on your NAS from anywhere. Use it to take phone or laptop backups, to store/watch videos, or even build your own music/movie streaming library as the ultimate cord-cutting move!

Designer: Frank Bernhardt

If you’re looking to buy a NAS, there are quite a few out there, but if you want to try building your own, DIY-maker Frank Bernhardt managed to put together one using a Raspberry Pi 4 module, a few extra components, and a 3D-printed enclosure. His entire process is up on Instructables for anyone to see and make, although you’ll definitely require some technical knowledge to get the software up and running.

Bernhardt’s NAS runs on a Pi4 module, connected to an SSD. The entire enclosure’s printed out of plastic, with metal inserts to screw the NAS together. Instead of simple status LEDs, Bernhardt even put a functional screen on the front that displays messages and the time of day when sitting idle.

One of the primary considerations in this project is the design of the enclosure. The enclosure needed to meet several specifications: it should allow access to the power and network connectors from the rear while keeping the USB connectors inside for a clean aesthetic. The use of melt-in brass threaded inserts ensured durability, and the compact size made it printable on a standard 200 x 200 mm 3D printer bed. The design avoids the common 90-degree offset for connectors typical in Raspberry Pi cases, streamlining cable management. Moreover, the enclosure does not require active cooling, reducing noise and making it suitable for SSDs.

Here are the materials and components used in the entire build:
Devices for computing and storage

  • Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with power supply, 2GB RAM is sufficient
  • 32 GB micro SD card, SanDisk Extreme PRO recommended
  • One or two 2.5″ SATA hard disk drives, SSD recommended
  • One or two USB 3.0 to SATA adapter(s), Sabrent adapter(s) recommended

Software

  • Raspberry Pi Operating System Image (Pi OS Lite, 64-bit no desktop)
  • NAS Software for Raspberry Pi OS, openmediavault recommended

Component parts

  • 10 x M3 brass threaded inserts
  • 10 x M3x5 screws (4 more for the second hard disk drive)
  • 4 x M2.5 brass threaded inserts
  • 4 x M2,5×6 screws
  • 4 x M3x6 countersunk head screws
  • 1 x Keystone module RJ45 Cat 6
  • 1 x RJ45 Cat 6 patch cable (length or color doesn’t matter)
  • 1 x USB type C male connector plug to solder
  • 1 x USB type C female connector jack 2 pin with wire
  • 1 x SH1106 1.3″ OLED module I2C 128X64 4 pin
  • 1 x 4-pin cable with Dupont female connectors, either self-made or ready-made
  • Some PLA filament for your printer with the colors you prefer.

Printing the enclosure involved creating four main parts: the tray, device rack, side lid, and an optional stand. The tray required support structures for the connector openings and display window, which can be generated using slicing software. The rack holds the Raspberry Pi and hard drives, ensuring that the components are securely mounted. The assembly of the rack with the Raspberry Pi and hard drives necessitated precision, particularly when melting the brass threaded inserts using a soldering iron.

The next phase involved setting up the Raspberry Pi OS and configuring the network. Using the Raspberry Pi Imager, Bernhardt installed Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) onto a micro SD card. Essential settings such as hostname, username, password, and SSH enablement were configured during this process. Assigning a static IP address to the NAS ensured consistent network access, either through the Raspberry Pi OS, openmediavault, or a DHCP server, with a provision for regular patches and security updates

After the software setup, attention shifted back to hardware. The USB-C power connection and OLED display installation were critical steps. The USB-C socket was soldered inside the enclosure due to space constraints. The OLED display, used for status updates, was delicate and had to be installed without bending. Properly connecting the display to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi was essential, ensuring to match the pin configurations correctly.

For the network connection, a keystone module simplified connectivity and future upgrades. By attaching a patch cable and keystone module inside the enclosure, the LAN port became easily accessible, accommodating both Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 models. This modular approach facilitates easy maintenance and upgrades, ensuring the longevity of the NAS setup.

Once the hardware assembly was complete, the OLED display software was installed. A Python script displays various system metrics on the OLED screen. The script runs at startup, continuously updating the display. Finally, the NAS software, openmediavault, was installed. This software provides a user-friendly web interface for managing the NAS, making it accessible and easy to configure. The installation was straightforward, and upon completion, the NAS was ready for use, with a commendable 500GB of storage.

Bernhardt’s Raspberry Pi NAS required a fair bit of technical expertise, but the process worked out MUCH cheaper than spending hundreds on a readymade NAS. If you’re looking for a nice summer project for yourself, you can build your own Raspberry Pi NAS too by following Bernhardt’s instructions here.

The post Build your own NAS Cloud Drive using a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 3D Printer first appeared on Yanko Design.