Conclusion

PROS  Sturdy and stylish case Double Gb-LAN ports Wireless-N True all-in-one home server CONS  Transfer speeds

Gold Award!

The B3 really is an all-in-wonder solution rather than just a network access drive. It can also serve as a firewall, router and also a wireless access point, providing fast 802.11n WLAN for the users. Also the dual LAN-connections are a great feature and make the B3 particularly versatile for single PC-users because this means people don't need a switch or hub to connect the NAS, but can connect the modem to one port of the B3 and the PC to another.The physical appearance of the drive is also lovely, and the thick aluminum casing not only looks nice, but also helps keep the drive cool.

Really the only downside we could think of is the transfer speeds, which just aren't as high as we'd hoped. The 18-28 MB/s transfer speed is easily enough for media streaming and everyday use, but it's still only about half of what the gigabit LAN and the HDD inside should be capable of. Anyway if you aren't even looking for blistering fast file transfers, the B3 is an excellent drive.

After the review was already written, the B3 stopped responding to any connection attempts and also the WLAN hot spot disappeared. We contacted the Excito customer service and despite it being the holiday season, they were quick to respond, and with their help we re-installed the device and it returned back to normal. Most likely this was just bad luck with our sample rather than an actual problem with the devices, so really what we learned here was that the customer service is really good and even if the device does, for whatever reason, get bricked, it just takes a short while to return everything back to normal with an USB-stick and the right image.