VENOEN Industrial Firewall Mini PC Alder Lake N100, Firewall Hardware Appliance 2.5Gbe 4 LAN Port, HD, DP, WiFi, RTC, 8GB DDR5 RAM 512GB SSD Fanless PC Firewall System/Win 11

I'll start off with saying that this is not really a product necessarily aimed at people who hate computers or aren't enthusiasts/technical, but then I don't believe this is aimed at the average home user - most are happy to use their router or software firewalls but those of us who aren't, have small businesses or whatever, might want something beyond those. Essentially a NUC but a touch different having 4 LAN ports, all of which are 2.5GB ports is very nice, seeing 1GB devices is fine but I live in the hope we're beyond that now and steering towards 5 and 10GB. The box has a security/tamper proof seal - might not be something you may care for but it does mean that for ultimately a security product, you'd know if it has been tampered with when purchased. Inside the box is the PC itself, screws, cables, VESA mount and power brick etc but somewhat bizarrely, no paperwork. Nothing to confirm the box contents, no quick-start guide, nada. While I knew it had an open source Firewall installed, I had no indications what it was. Build wise, the box is solid and hefty. Sure it's small and compact but it's solid metal (aluminium) and the top of the case is essentially a large heat sink to dissipate heat. It got a little warm, but nothing major at all. If there's any criticism about the box and this is all subjective of course, the HDMI/DP ports being on the front aren't ideally situated. Side would be neater, rear better but no space really, but the front makes it a tad ugly (sorry!). Oh and the power switch LED on the front is incredibly bright (so depending on where you put it, you might want to cover it). Powering the box up and using a portable screen (as its handy) there's some configuration screens presented but nothing major (although they might just autoload on defaults initially, it's handy to see it boot if nothing else to confirm the IP address for the GUI, unless you run a port scanner). Once you know where the box is setup, you can type that IP on your PC/Mac/Whatever and gain access to the setup screen. This is where you also find out the Firewall software being pfSense CE (actually the latest version at time of writing) so before you go to the GUI, you can visit the online documentation via their website as you might want it to hand when you con figure the box/software. I'm not going to go into the software beyond this - you can install your own should you wish to or use that, either way, we're just talking about the hardware itself. Removing the screws on the bottom allow you access to the internals where there's a SATA port, the NVME and RAM, both of which are easily upgradeable and the WIFI module. It's all very easy to fix/upgrade should you wish to. Stability of the box seems fine - its been on several hours and as said, a bit warm, but stable (it is a low power CPU after all and the heatsink top helps heat wise). With it being well built, I don't see any issues with this running 24/7 - the software is essentially entirely your choice but a decent one as such being bundled. It's a nice hardware platform with faster than typical LAN ports for a reasonable price tag.

2.5GbE Firewall Mini PC N100 Micro Firewall Appliance with 4 x i225 Nics, 8GB DDR5 RAM 256GB SSD ....... This Mini PC came very neatly boxed, it includes the power supply with UK 3-pin plug, 2 x Wifi antenna’s, a flat HDMI lead, a SATA drive connecting cable, mounting plate and screws. The box has a security seal (not sure why) and must be generic as the pictured PCs on the box are different to the model inside. The box does not contain any instructions, warranty papers or any other documentation. External on the front panel are 4 x USB-A ports, two of them are USB-3 and the other two are USB 2, in addition is an HDMI port, a Display Port and a power button. The rear panel consists of 2 x RPSMA connectors for Wi-Fi antennas, a power LED, an activity LED, and 4 x (2.5GbE) LAN ports. Noticeably though, it lacks a USB-C port. Powering on, the system booted, displaying bios screen first before giving several options, but it was too fast to even read those options before it starts to load the OS which is ‘FeeBSD’ a distro of Linux with the pfSense software. I am completely new to this, but I managed to connect my LAN and set it up running. Using another computer on my home network I can then log in to pfSense Web page and go through the setup procedure. I fumbled through the setup just to get things running and no doubt it still requires setting up correctly, but for now, I just want to see what is available. On the Web interface menu is a ‘Help’ pull down which has various help section for documentation, ‘FreeBSD Handbook’, ‘pfSense Book’, help for each page of the web interface and more. From here though, I won’t review the installed software as this is a free open-source Linux distro and this is more about the hardware. The hardware has an Intel N100 CPU running at 800Mhz with boost up to 3.4Ghz, there is 8GB of DDR5 ram installed and a Gigabyte 256GB N.2 SSD. For graphics it uses Microsoft’s built-in UHD graphics. The build quality is excellent, with a solid aluminium case which acts as a heatsink with fins on the top, this is perfectly engineered and looks great as it is passively cooled. Although this has been designed for a few specific uses, it can also be used as a general home / office PC, although it lacks connectivity. It has WiFi but no Bluetooth, audio is by HDMI and there is no separate audio output or microphone input. There are 4 USB-A ports, two are USB-3.0 and two are USB-2.0, the HDMI and Display Port video outputs are on the front panel, and there are 4 x LAN ports on the rear. Internally, it has a single memory socket fitted with 8GB of DDR5 RAM, this can be upgraded to 16GB. There is an N.2 socket fitted with a ‘Gigabyte’ 256GB SSD with heatsink attached, this can also be upgraded. The computer is supplied with a SATA lead for connecting and additional internal SSD and there is a single SATA port on the main board alongside a power connector, however when trying to fit a standard 2.5” SSD, it doesn’t seem to fit unless I put excessive stress on the cable forcing it into position, a more flexible cable would have been better. The Wi-Fi card is slow, it is just a cheap basic 802.11 b/g/n card, I found speeds were poor even next to my Wi-Fi access point. Compatibility has been an issue, although I have tried several LINUX distributions and all have been 100% compatible, Windows 10 & 11 seem to have problems with the LAN ports. They are not recognised by Windows and require drivers. I did obtain a driver after lots of searching, but it will only utilise 2 of the 4 LAN ports. I have tried to contact the vendor (VENOEN) regarding this but so far there has been no response at all. This is a solidly made Mini-PC, primarily designed for a specific application. It runs fast and so far, 100% compatible with LINUX (the distros I have tried at least). However, the software I need to run is only available for Windows 10 and above, and with that, I lose the capability of two LAN ports. This together with lack of documentation and lack of support has dropped the star rating for me.

Arrived looking used — packaging and wear didn’t match a new item. NVMe showed early signs of faults right after setup, which shouldn’t happen on a new drive. Works, but reliability is questionable. Feels like a refurbished unit sold at new price.