We're not quite sure what to call the Zima Board 2, as it's a rather strange piece of kit that you very much could use as a NAS, especially with regards to the bundle we were sent for review. We were sent the 1664 configuration of the Zima Board 2 for this review, where 16 stands for 16 GB of RAM and 64 for 64 GB of e MMC. There's also an 832 SKU, which as you most likely already have guessed, stands for 8 GB of RAM and 32 GB of e MMC.
Both SKUs sport an Intel processor N150, and it all comes packaged in what largely is a heatsink. There's no chassis/housing to speak of and the Zima Board 2 should be seen more as a developer kit than anything else, although it could most definitely be used for some hobby projects. The mentioned bundle is referred to as the mini NAS kit bundle by ZIMA, which includes a mount for a pair of 3.5-inch SATA drives, an NVMe to PCIe converter card, a PCIe flex cable, a micro DP to HDMI adapter and a pair of Ethernet cables, although we didn't get the latter for some reason.
Everything can sort of be assembled into a kind of open chassis, but it looks a tad messy, and it's a bit quirky to get it all assembled. Once again though, this is not a device for those that are looking for a traditional easy-to-use NAS. The Zima Board 2 runs Zima OS, which looks quite modern and slick, but it's pretty basic in terms of features.
There's a free version of the OS that you can try on your own hardware that doesn't have too many limitations, but the plus version is what's shipping with ZIMA's own hardware, and it has no limitations. You might've seen that ZIMA launched a range of NAS devices earlier this year—called the Zima Cube—which also ship with the same OS. We'll go over what the OS offers in comparison to a more traditional NAS OS later on in the review.
As already mentioned, it's a feature light OS for better or worse, but it has some interesting quirks of its own. With that said, let's start with taking a closer look at what we were sent and a closer look at the hardware itself. Specifications Zima Board 2 Specs & Features Processor Intel Processor N150 4c/4t 4× Twin Lake 3.6 GHz Memory16 GB soldered LPDDR5-6400 Storage 64 GB e MMC Two SATA 6 Gbps ports RAID Levels: Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0, 1Capacity Up to 64 TB Operating System Zima OS Plus 1.7 (Linux Kernel 6.18.9) File System (Internal Drives)EXT4BTRFSFile System (External Drives)NTFS, BTRFS, HFS+EXT4, EXT3, FAT32Networking2× 2.5 Gbit Ethernet I/O Ports2× USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A1× PCIe 3.0 x41× Mini Display Port 1.42× SATA 6 Gbps with power Dimensions140 (H) × 83 (W) × 31 (D) mm Weight407 g Power Supply External, 60 W 100–240 V input 12 V 5 A output Shenzhen Sunshine Technological Co. Ltd. XSI-125000 DEX Fanoptional 40 mm PWM fan Warranty One-year Price Excluding VAT (at time of review) $519 for the supplied Mini NAS kit.
Source: TechPowerUp Reviews · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing