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Freecom Network Media Centre

The acme of one-drive media streamers?

OK, so the torrent client is broken and the setup is murky – does the NMC at least perform well in the benchmarks? Let’s compare with some other NAS boxes we've reviewed recently.

File Transfer Results

Freecom Network Media Centre

Data transfer speeds in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better

All of these transfer speeds are benchmarked using each device’s Gigabit Ethernet ports on the exact same network, yet the Freecom box underperforms by miles. Only its random read ability comes anywhere close to the Buffalo LinkStation Duo, which in itself, is only moderately paced.

The drive is sluggish to the point that the benefit of Gigabit Ethernet is almost lost as it runs, on average, only 7MB/s faster than 100Mb/s Ethernet allows, thus only utilising 5.6 per cent of the bandwidth afforded by Gigabit Ethernet compared to 21 per cent and 35 per cent for the LinkStation Duo and Iocell NetDisk, respectively.

Freecom Network Media Centre

Set up the device with its own utility

If you're patient enough to wait the nine minutes and twenty-five seconds it took us to transfer an 8GB 1080p video to the Network Media Centre at a sustained data rate of about 14MB/s, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find that it will play back smoothly on any UPNP/DLNA device supported by TwonkyMedia, including devices like the Xbox 360.

Next page: Verdict

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