Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD

Purchased to use as home router running pfSense. Well packaged, everything needed in the box. Inserted pfSense USB installer into usb slot, booted. The vault automatically recognized the usb installer and booted from it. Had pfSense installed in 5 minutes of powering up.

This is a great piece of hardware for running the OPNsense or pfSense firewalls. I installed the latest version of both operating systems on it without any issues. Its been running without any hiccups for several months now.

Works great for pfsense. This is the third computer I purchased for this purpose. The first one no aes-ni... The second was doa... I was trying to get buy paying less than 300 for a router box, but in the end you gotta pay to play. This works.

Untangle 14.1.1 works flawlessly. Solid performance from the quad core Celeron, the ram and SSD. In the barbone version they say you should know how to install, but dont make any mention of which set of screws to remove to Best access the board. Even under load the aluminum heatsink keeps this unit cool.

Really wanted this product to work. Got the first one and kept getting CAM Errors for the hard drive. Replaced the hard drive still the same error. Returned this the first time and received the second one. Now Im operating with all new hardware and Im still getting the same error. Put in known good hardware and the box crashes. Now it just beeps at me, reset BIOS buy jumping pins according to instructions, nothing just more beeping. Terrible product and would not purchase again.

Came with a loose screw inside and wouldnt post, acknowledge drives, or indicate any functionality past power being applied whatsoever. Great paperweight, awful electronic. You could do better with literally anything else.

The appliance was very easy to get up and running with pfsense. Took me less than 10 minutes to install and setup a basic configuration. It was running fine for a couple of days and then pfsense started logging kernel cores. The system would restart itself and work without issue for a day or 2. That is until it continually started coring when attempting to load the wan interface.

I had PFsense running on a 4 core computer that drew about 54 watts, according to my Kill A Watt. I already had the ram and the mSATA drive, and now the Protectli Vault does the same work using 10 watts.

Pros

I started using Protectli Vaults in 2019 when I finally made the switch from Tomato routing to Untangle for residential routing. You can get a better price and even pick up the Vault at Protectlis offices in San Diego area. Very impressive business. I now have 5 J3160 units installed using Untangle (sorry, cant comment on Sophos or other UTM installs), and they are running with never an issue. The vaults are extremely well built, and you get much more processor/memory/SSD for your money than with UTs products (about 50% of the cost). Itd recommend at least a 120Gb mSATA and always use 8GB of RAM. Protectli is working on a Vault with SPF, so Im excited to get that when it comes out. Very pleased.