UnifyDrive UT2 Review: Up to 16 TB of Storage

Portable hard drives are nothing new, but the UnifyDrive UT2 takes things up a notch. It’s a portable NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive that supports up to two NVMe SSDs, allowing for a potential total capacity of 16TB.

With one-tap backup functionality from CF cards, SD cards, and USB drives, along with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, a built-in UPS battery, AI photo-tagging, and even HDMI and USB-C video output, the UT2 is packed with features.

What exactly is the UnifyDrive UT2?

The UnifyDrive UT2 is primarily aimed at creatives who need fast, portable backup options for their media files. However, it’s more than just a storage device; it functions similarly to a mini PC. You can connect to it via your phone to browse and preview files, and it integrates into your home network via gigabit Ethernet. Alternatively, it can serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing others to access files and collaborate.

The UT2 doubles as a portable media player. With HDMI output, you can connect it to a projector or monitor and play your media files. The USB-C port also supports video output, in theory making it handy to use with AR glasses or personal cinema setups.

As a NAS, it offers private cloud functionality and can run Docker containers—though that feature wasn’t available yet at the time of writing. The app refers to Virtual Android, and it’s not clear if this is a separate function or perhaps just a curious way to refer to Virtualized Docker apps.

The UT2 is ambitious, promising a lot of features. The real question is, can it deliver?

A word of caution: It’s a Kickstarter product

Before you get too excited, I should offer a quick disclaimer that the UT2 is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. While I’ve been sent a unit for testing, this article isn’t sponsored, and I can only comment on the version I’ve received. The product feels polished, but as with any crowdfunded project, there are no guarantees on delivery timelines or final production quality.

UnifyDrive is a new company with no previous Kickstarter projects. The U.S. address they list on their website is actually Incorporating Services Ltd., a company that registers businesses on behalf of others. However, the team behind this project appears to be part of Z-Space, a Chinese company that already offers NAS products to the local market. In fact, the UT2 seems to be an upgraded version of their original T2 product.

There are no obvious red flags, and the hardware I received works (mostly) as advertised, with proper packaging and branding. However, as with any Kickstarter, don’t spend money you can’t afford to lose. At the time of writing, the super early bird price is $400, but this will increase to $500 after the initial run.

Design and build

The UT2 is roughly the size of a large phablet (175 x 90 x 28mm), with a rubber bumper that gives it a rugged, outdoor-friendly look, reminiscent of the now discontinued Lacie rugged drives. However, despite the design, it isn’t waterproof or dustproof, with plenty of exposed ports and circuitry.

The rubber bumper may help it survive small drops, especially since it uses SSDs, which are less fragile than traditional hard drives. It weighs just under 400g with the bumper or just over 300g without.

The package includes a Type-C cable (labeled as 8K), an Ethernet cable, an HDMI cable (also 8K), a remote control, batteries, and a power adapter.

Specifications

The UnifyDrive UT2 is powered by an RK 3588C, an eight-core CPU with 8GB of RAM, a G610 GPU, and a 6 TOPS (Trillion Operations per Second) NPU for AI features. While the marketing claims up to 16TB of storage, this depends on the SSDs you install. The model I tested came with a 512GB SSD, but you’ll need to factor in the cost of M.2 2280 SSDs, as the $500 price is just for the bare drive.

SSD speeds max out at around 800MB/s, while CFExpress and SD card speeds reach up to 312MB/s.

Ports and connectivity

The UT2 has a power button on the front, a WiFi button on the side to toggle the hotspot, and a backup button alongside various output and storage ports. You can connect via a WiFi hotspot, join an existing network, or use Ethernet for more reliable operation, especially during initial setup.

All configurations are managed through the smartphone app or via a web browser; the HDMI port is strictly for media playback and doesn’t offer access to any management interface. The app is functional but suffers from some clunky English. It’s not the worst I’ve seen, but it could do with some simplification.

Key features

Flash Drive Mode

The UT2 can act as a flash drive when plugged into your PC, just like any other USB storage device. However, enabling this feature requires partitioning off part of the drive, creating a virtual USB device host. This takes storage away from your main volume, and it can’t dynamically expand as needed; the entire amount is allocated immediately.

Unfortunately, this means your PC can only access the partitioned section, not the entire NAS storage–and the UT2 still needs to be plugged into a power source in addition to the USB-C data connection. Once safely ejected, the virtual flash drive is available over the network.

While useful, it’s slower than a dedicated USB-C flash drive.

Backup from SD, CF Cards, and USB

The UT2 excels at its plug-and-play backup feature. After enabling it through the app, you can configure various settings, such as choosing the backup folder and whether to delete files after transfer.

In the field, this feature is straightforward: press the Plug Backup button twice, and two beeps will indicate the start of a copy; three indicate it’s finished. You can preview files directly in the app, which is great for checking if your shots are in focus while your camera is charging.

The only downside to this otherwise outstanding feature is the …

Battery life: 30 minutes to an hour

The UT2 includes a built-in UPS battery, but it’s not designed for regular operation. Ideally, you should provide a steady power source via USB-C. The internal battery lasts about 30 to 60 minutes, which which may not be long enough for large file transfers. During testing, a 150GB transfer took roughly 15 minutes.

The battery is best treated as a UPS backup for when you accidentally pull out the power cable, not as a primary power source.

Media playback: It’s no VLC

The UT2 offers media playback through its smartphone app or over HDMI, as well as a Plex-like app for managing larger libraries (though that needs a TVDB API key, which I wasn’t going to sign up for).

While the app worked well for previewing files, HDMI output was less reliable. Out of four random test video files (two full-length movies and two very short home movies), one played perfectly, one was jittery, and one wouldn’t play at all. The other played fine, but wouldn’t display subtitles over HDMI, though they appeared in the app.

In my experience, the UT2 media player is finicky, and you shouldn’t expect the same universal compatibility that VLC has spoiled us with.

If the HDMI interface offered a full Google TV experience, it would be a different story. Hopefully, there’ll be some choice of media playback app by the final release.

AI photo tagging

Like many recent NAS systems, the UT2 includes AI photo-tagging. Once enabled, the model is downloaded, and your media is scanned for faces and scenes. Separately, you can enable a natural language search engine.

Feeding a random year of data from my archives, it worked well, accurately identifying people and scenes, while the natural language AI search provided similar functionality to Google Photos. It’s worth emphasizing for privacy-conscious folks that all processing is done locally on the device thanks to the powerful NPU, with no data sent to the cloud.

While it’s a neat feature, I have to wonder if it fits in with the “portable NAS” concept; I wouldn’t use this as a primary storage device for all my family photos. But as a backup for my smartphone to quickly recall a recent image I took? That could be handy (assuming your phone doesn’t already do that).

Should you buy the UnifyDrive UT2?

The UnifyDrive UT2 is a mixed bag. While it has many useful features, including a killer SD card backup function, it can be unintuitive. The app interface feels disjointed, and some features, like the virtual USB disk partitioning, are confusing.

It’s not the best choice for home use or as a media player, but for its intended audience, the UT2 has some outstanding features. If you’re a mobile creative who regularly fills SD cards with footage and would like to aggregate and make it available over a network, the UT2 could be a valuable tool. It’s a little more niche than I had hoped it would be coming into this review, but I can’t think of a better, more innovative product that attempts everything the UT2 has.

If you’re comfortable with the Kickstarter risks and need a portable backup NAS, and you’re prepared to put some time into learning the workflows and configuring it exactly how you need it to work, the UT2 is worth a look.

How do you feel about UnifyDrive UT2? Let us know in the comments below.