LincPlus LincStation N2

A smartly designed, affordable all-flash desktop NAS with plenty of storage features and good 10GbE performance

- DAVE MITCHELL SPECIFICATIONS

PRICE Diskless, £354 exc VAT from lincplustech.​com

The LincPlus LincStation N1 impressed us on many levels when we reviewed it last year (see issue 362, p102), although we did bemoan the fact that the undeniable performance potential of this all-flash appliance was restricted by its 2.5GbE network port. The LinkStation N2 makes our wishes come true as it sports a 10GbE port but goes a lot further with even more upgrades.

Physically the 35mm high chassis is the same, but the quad-core 2GHz Intel Celeron N5105 CPU in the N1 gets the elbow for a more modern quad-core Intel N100, which boasts a top burst frequency of 3.4GHz. Memory has also been improved: the N2 is endowed with 16GB of faster DDR5 soldered on its motherboard.

Storage potential remains the same, with two SATA SFF carriers behind the front flip-down panel and four M.2 NVMe SSD slots underneath. The N2 keeps the front-mounted USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, while at the rear you now have one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 and a doubling of USB-A 2 ports, plus a 3.5mm audio-out jack and an HDMI 2 port for receiving 4K video from the CPU's integrated GPU.