Introduction

We would like to thank Shuttle for supplying the review sample.



Incredibly popular in their own segment of the market, Shuttle is widely known for their dimensionally small barebones, and they apparently sought to explore new territories by entering the NAS market with the OMNINAS KD20 we already reviewed. That model sold so well that Shuttle decided to release two new NAS boxes, the KD21 and KD22. The first mostly addresses the budget-oriented user and looks like the mainstream KD20 model because of its white enclosure, while the second packs a little stronger hardware and more features, but inevitably also costs a little more. Both utilize fresh ARM-based CPUs clocked to 1-1.2 GHz and have twice the memory of the first OMNINAS KD20. Speeds on paper reach 110 MB/s read and 75 MB/s write, and the new, stronger CPUs promise good performance with even multiple services running at the same time as network transfers take place. The KD20 admittedly didn't perform so well there because of its weak CPU and low RAM total, so we are really curious to see if the new members of the family will do better.

This review will take a look at the current flagship of the OMNINAS line, the KD22. It not only comes with a stronger CPU and a fancy black case, but has an integrated wireless LAN function that allows multiple devices, like notebooks, tablets, or smartphones, to wirelessly connect to it. The KD22 can, in other words, be transformed into a fully featured hot spot. It also has a hot-swap function that allows you to easily remove and replace HDDs, and another interesting feature that caught our attention was the PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) camera copy option. Connecting a camera that supports this function to one of the USB ports at the front will then automatically save your photos and videos to a specified folder, which saves you the trouble of powering your PC up to perform the task.