"On paper, the Zimaboard 2 looks like a promising fanless device as a mini low-cost NAS, soft router, and/or mini PC with two SATA ports and a PCIe slot not found on other systems in that price range. The pre-installed ZimaOS makes it easy to get started with file sharing and installing popular software packages like AdGuard Home, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, JellyFin, and so on. Low-level 2.5GbE and SATA performance were all as expected.
Sadly, there are also many flaws. While ZimaOS is easy to use with a web dashboard to handle every task, advanced users may find it limited as the rootfs is read-only and it lacks a package manager found on typical Linux distributions. I also found a few bugs here and there, such as the inability to play an MKV video in the Files app (MP4 was fine)
Although that’s understandable due to the fanless design and compact size, the Intel N150 is not fully utilized because of throttling during multi-core workloads, so it is slower than all Alder Lake-N systems (N97/N100) I have tested in most tests. The metal enclosure also gets very hot, up to 76°C, so you have to be careful when adding USB peripherals, and you may want to keep it out of reach of small kids."
