Iomega StorCenter ix4-300d

Review: Iomega StorCenter ix4-300d

by Parm Mann on 1 February 2013, 14:00 3.5

Tags: Iomega

Final Thoughts and Rating

Performance is now at a comfortable level and the ix4-300d's well-rounded feature set makes this a NAS that would fit well into most home or small-office environments.

With the ix4-300d, Iomega has successfully raised performance expectations for its mid-range network-attached storage solutions.

Powered by a 1.3GHz Marvell Armada XP processor, this is an efficient box of tricks that offers capable performance at a competitive price. NAS solutions powered by Intel Atom CPUs will still have the edge in terms of overall speed, but Iomega has managed to close that gap while maintaining a gulf in price. The latter is perfectly demonstrated in the company's own product range, where a 4TB Intel-powered px4-300d carries a retail price of £983, compared to £575 for a 4TB ix4-300d powered by Marvell.

If the cost of high-performance units has been putting you off, Iomega's latest is well worthy of consideration. Performance is now at a comfortable level and the ix4-300d's well-rounded feature set makes this a NAS that would fit well into most home or small-office environments.

The Good

Capable performance
Well-rounded feature set
Keen pricing

The Bad

Slower than premium Intel equivalents
Some limitations; strictly a single-volume NAS

HEXUS Rating

Iomega StorCenter ix4-300d

HEXUS Awards

Iomega StorCenter ix4-300d

HEXUS Where2Buy

The reviewed Iomega StorCenter ix4-300d is available to purchase from Misco.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Why do these NAS, essentially bare-bones have inside them that makes them so expensive? This is £460 off the shelf.

A high quality case, £100,
a motherboard, £50,
open source software: £0

What am I missing?

Part of it is that everyone uses their own custom made hardware, so development costs a quite high. Total volumes of these are respectable, but volume sales for an individual unit would be pretty low I suspect. This means those dev costs need to be split over a relatively low number of units, meaning the costs are actually higher than you would guess.

Add in the support and software development costs (yes most of the software is OSS, not all of it is and there are quite a few custom components and features) and you have a good portion of that cost.

I fully expect there are also higher margins to be made on these as turn key solutions compared to standard parts which can have as little as 1-5% margins at each stage.

Does the comment, Some limitations; strictly a single-volume NAS, mean that you cannot create 2 ESXi Datastores, or 1 volume and lots of vparttions to present as iSCSI targets?