Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition NAS review

TechRadar Verdict It’s wonderful to see Beelink being so bullish about NAS, and coming to market with such developed solutions. This product shows off great build quality, modularity, performance and innovation in one relatively affordable package. Beelink deserves some praise for this hardware and software combo. Reasons to buy +Solid construction +Powerful 12-core CPU +Up to 96GB of memory +FygoOS +Modular chassis Reasons to avoid -Launched on Kickstarter -Only one LAN port is 10GbE -Needs tool-less trays -Lacks an NPU Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test. Jump To: 30-second review Price and availability Specs Design Features Software Performance Final verdict Should you buy it? Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: 30-second reviewThis review covers the four-bay ‘Creator NAS’ as Beelink calls it, which is available in two SKUs and uses the Intel Core i5-13500H mobile processor. But Beelink has five ‘Home NAS’ options below that one, using the Intel J5005, N95, N150 and Core 304 processors. And another two higher-end options with AMD Ryzen AI 350 and AI 470 class processors.The four-bay enclosure is a compact all-metal unibody, measuring 165 x 121 x 185mm and weighing 2.4kg without drives. Beelink says it is 50 per cent smaller in volume than a conventional design, and compared to anything by Synology or QNAP, it’s certainly much smaller.Inside, an internal blower on the motherboard module pulls cool air in and pushes it out to keep everything cool, and the milled aluminium construction also helps radiate heat. Silicone mounts sit either side of each drive and between the case and the motherboard tray, reducing vibration and noiseLatest Videos FromTechRadarThe review unit, with its Intel Core i5 13500H, has 12 cores, 16 threads and a 45W TDP. It comes with 32GB of DDR4, a 500GB system SSD and four M.2 slots. Beelink pitches it at creative professionals, and this is a great spec for those who need large amounts of fast storage for video editing or maintaining photo collections.Earlier Beelink NAS used the FygoOS operating system, and it’s also in this NAS. It is flexible and well-featured, and it makes the ME Pro feel like a platform rather than an appliance. The evolution of this aspect is impressive, and FygoOS delivers many of the higher-end features that some NAS products lack.However, there is one caveat. This is a Kickstarter launch product; therefore, a pledge is not a purchase, and delivery dates can slip. Buyers need to weigh that, but so far I’m impressed with this NAS on several critical levels. And if the Kickstarter goes well and this hardware ends up in the retail channel, it might be included in our best NAS devices. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Price and availabilityHow much does it cost? From $819When is it out? On Kickstarter soonWhere can you get it? Only on Kickstarter initiallyThe ME Pro range is listed as coming soon on Kickstarter. Beelink is offering a Super Early Bird discount of 30 per cent. Prices are in US dollars, and drives are not included.Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletterSign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!The 13500H four-bay costs $819 at Super Early Bird and $1,169 at list. All four-bay prices are below, Super Early Bird first, then list. Swipe to scroll horizontally Beelink ME Pro Kickstarter pricing Model Super Early Bird List price J5005 $369 $529 N95 $489 $699 N150 $539 $769 Core 3 304 $769 $1,099 Core i5 13500H $819 $1,169 Ryzen AI 7 H 350 $1,049 $1,499 Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 $1,379 $1,969 A $10 VIP deposit before launch unlocks a free four-bay upgrade. And if you back the two-bay tier machine, you will receive the four-bay model at the same price.Given what some of these designs include in processing power and memory, these are mostly excellent deals. Specifically, $819 for the Creator NAS seems like exceptional value.Value: 4.5 / 5 (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Specs Swipe to scroll horizontally ME Pro Creator Edition Specifications Item Spec CPU: Intel Core i5 13500H (12 cores, 16 threads) GPU: Intel Iris Xe (80 EU) RAM: 32GB DDR4 expandable to 96GB System Storage: 512GB internal SSD SATA Storage: 4x 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) M.2 Storage: 2x M.2 NVMe Gen4 x4, 2x M.2 NVMe Gen3 x2 (one used for OS) RAID: Basic, Linear, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 Ports: 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm Audio jack Networking: 1x 10GbE LAN, 1x 2.5GbE Outputs: 1x HDMI port, up to 4K resolution OS: FygoOS Internal File Systems: BTRFS, EXT4, ZFS External File Systems: EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+, ExFAT Maximum Capacity: 4x 30TB HDD + 4x 4TB M.2 NVMe, plus external storage on USB or Thunderbolt Max TDP: 45W Dimensions: 165 x 121 x 185 (mm) Swipe to scroll horizontally Beelink ME Pro Series overview Model Cores and threads Max TDP AI TOPS Memory M.2 slots System drive Max storage Pentium Silver J5005 4C / 4T 10W NO NPU 8GB DDR4 2 128GB SSD 128TB Intel N95 4C / 4T 25W NO NPU 12GB LPDDR5 3 128GB SSD 132TB Intel N150 4C / 4T 25W NO NPU 16GB LPDDR5 3 128GB SSD 132TB Intel Core 3 304 5C / 5T 35W 24 TOPS 16GB DDR5 1 512GB UFS 3.1 124TB Intel Core i5 13500H 12C / 16T 45W NO NPU 32GB DDR4 4 500GB SSD 136TB AMD Ryzen AI 7 H 350 8C / 16T 45W 50 TOPS 32GB DDR5 3 500GB SSD 132TB AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 12C / 24T 45W 86 TOPS 32GB DDR5 3 500GB SSD 132TB Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: DesignDrawer conceptEasy access to some upgradesLots of screwsThe drawer-style design is a neat idea: it uses almost the same mechanism as the drives, but replicated on the motherboard, which slides out for maintenance and upgrades.That should make a processor upgrade a far simpler job than in a normal NAS. Beelink has also hinted at AMD and ARM boards in the same chassis. If you own a four-bay, you could buy a different two-bay and swap the platforms, in theory.The unibody metal case is milled from solid aluminium and makes for a small footprint for a four-bay NAS. It’s also quiet enough that this could sit on a desktop.Cooling relies on one internal blower rather than a bank of case fans, and when the motherboard module is removed, the dual-sided design is clearly influenced by Beelink’s mini PC designs.Access to the two M.2 2280 Gen4 slots is super-simple, and they come with their own chunky heatsinks to help remove heat with the help of the fan assembly. There are two other M.2 slots (Gen 3 x2), one of these being occupied by the FygoOS installation, but getting those requires removing the fan.Since the unused third slot doesn’t run at the same speed as the two easily accessible ones, it probably wouldn’t be a good plan to try to make a RAID array of the three, but that slot might be useful for a caching SSD. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)What I’m less impressed with is that the trays aren't tool-less for either 3.5- or 2.5-inch mechanisms. Each drive needs four screws, and once installed, two more hold it in place from the back of the tray.The designers' issue here was that if they used a tool-less tray and a more elegant lock, then the NAS would be bigger, and the designers didn’t care for that. They also used four of these tiny screws to hold the motherboard tray in place, and these screws are easy to misplace.One annoyance is that, to hold the thin steel air filter on the rear of the NAS, ten small magnets are glued into the chassis. They are placed within 4mm of where the screws hold the trays in, which inevitably means that when you go to screw them in, the magnets pull the screw off the screwdriver before you can thread it.In short, the filter didn’t need that many magnets, and they didn’t need to be where the tray screws are.The fine irony of all these screws is that the enclosure tolerances are so good that the screws holding the trays in and the motherboard are mostly pointless, certainly with the numbers used.These points aside, the ME Pro is better built than most NAS enclosures, even if some compromises have been made to keep it so small.Design: 4 / 5Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: FeaturesIntel Core 5 13500H CPUUp to 96GB of memoryAI capabilities are limitedAs a laptop processor, the Core 5 13500H was a strong platform sporting 12 cores total (4 Performance-cores with Hyper-Threading and 8 Efficient-cores) and 16 threads. As is the way with Intel 13th Gen technology, the performance-cores boost at a higher level, up to 4.7 GHz; and the efficient-cores boost at lower levels, up to 3.5 GHz.All cores share an 18 MB Intel Smart Cache, and the chip has a base power TDP of 45W.Some laptop designs using this chip scaled power up to 115W, but from what I understand, the ME Pro has more than enough performance at its base wattage.The review hardware came with two 16GB DDR4-3200 modules providing 32GB, but if you can find them, this system could take dual 48GB modules for 96GB in total. It’s a shame Beelink didn’t use LPDDR5 for faster performance and lower power consumption, but the cost was probably prohibitive when these decisions were made.The GPU is an Intel Iris Xe Graphics with 80 execution units running up to 1.45 GHz, and it shares memory with the rest of the platform. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)The best aspect of this processor, aside from its high core count, is its PCIe lanes: 28 total. In this design, not all 28 lanes are created equal.Eight primary lanes are Gen5, eight secondary lanes are Gen4, and all sixteen lanes are CPU-attached. The final twelve lanes route through the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) to handle slower or secondary peripherals (like Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, audio controllers, USB extensions, or secondary M.2 storage slots), and these are all Gen3.That’s a terrific amount of bandwidth, and it enables dual M.2 Gen 4 x4, two more M.2 Gen3, a 10GbE LAN port and a 2.5GbE LAN port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and three USB 3.2 Gen2 ports. That’s plenty for most people, as you can use the Thunderbolt port as a 40Gbps network connection if needed.Overall, the architecture choices in this NAS are right for demanding workloads like video editing, photo manipulation, and software development, thanks to its hybrid core layout.However, only the Ryzen AI models are sold specifically for local language models. The 13500H review unit is not one of them, and Beelink lists no AI performance figure for it. The AI 470 is quoted at up to 86 TOPS, with that number assembled from an NPU with 55 TOPS and a CPU and GPU combined for 32 TOPS.Therefore, if you intend to run AI models on the NAS, one of the AMD machines would be preferable to this system. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Features: 4 / 5Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: SoftwareFygoOSDocker and virtual machinesOllama options (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)FygoOS is the international face of a Chinese NAS solution that has surfaced in the past year. Its parent is fnOS, also called Feiniu Private Cloud. I believe a small team of NAS enthusiasts built it around Debian Linux, and it is closed source. During its public beta, it was offered as a free option for Chinese home users.Reviews for this platform only began in early July 2026. Early adopters found a new NAS OS in version 1.2 and the FygoTV app in 0.9. The name hints at open source, but it is a proprietary system built partly on open source parts, with GPL source releases still in progress. It runs on x86 and ARM hardware and offers ZFS, Btrfs and ext4 storage. The changelog shows active development.During my time with the ME Pro 4, it had several releases; I used version 1.2.0800, and FygoTV was 0.9.7-3.FygoOS is the beating heart of the ME Pro, and it aims at beginners while leaving room for experts. Beelink says apps install with one click and update the same way. It lists official and community apps for media, backup, productivity and virtualisation.For what appears to be a relatively new NAS OS, this all seems much more advanced than I’d normally expect, both in application selection and feature set.As far as I’m aware, FygoOS is the only other hardware-included NAS OS with ZFS file system support other than QNAP QuTS hero. You can get this feature via Unraid, TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault, among other places, but you would be installing them onto this hardware to replace FygoOS.Included in the selection of apps is a powerful photo and media search tool. It can use AI to rapidly find images using facial recognition and smart categorisation. The private cinema feature matches metadata automatically, and Beelink claims up to 99 per cent accuracy in identifying the content. It also syncs playback between devices and supports real-time hardware transcoding.However, I was disappointed that, as nice as some of these tools are, Beelink missed a few tricks. One is the HDMI port, which is promoted as supporting up to 4K output. That might be true, but it can’t be driven by the Fygo TV app to play files directly onto a TV. That’s something you can do with a Ugreen or Asustor NAS, but not this.But there are a few things it can do that are more exclusive. One of the more surprising features of this platform is the collaborative media workspace.Teams can preview video, photos, audio, documents, fonts and 3D files without downloading them. AI search finds content by meaning, not just file names. You can send a review link, and reviewers add comments, annotations and timestamped notes. Sharing supports access controls, expiry dates, watermarks and branding. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)The only caveat is that the features are tiered, with the best ones requiring a subscription.The personal tier is included in all ME Pro. The business tier comes with a 30-day free trial on the J5005, N95, N150 and 304 models. The 13500H and both Ryzen AI models get six months free. But, and this is a concern, Beelink has not said what the business tier costs afterwards. I’d hate to use this for six months, find it incredibly useful and then discover that the monthly cost is too high to make it practical.Being an Intel-based platform, and not ARM, this NAS supports virtualisation and with 32GB of RAM it is relatively easy to have several VT instances running. And, it has Docker, expanding the amount of software that can run on this platform dramatically.It was interesting to note that while the hardware used here, specifically the Core i5 13500H, doesn’t have an NPU, it is a reasonably powerful processor and it has Iris Xe graphics, which can be used to process AI LLMs.The standard application set includes Ollama, and I was able to install it and use it to run a local model like Gemma. While it wasn’t the fastest response, it did work quite well, so using this machine for AI isn’t impossible.Obviously, if you want to use the NAS as an AI assistant, the two models with AMD Ryzen AI processors are a better choice, but even without a dedicated NPU, this hardware can run some AI and support interactive chats without relying on the Cloud. (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Software: 4 / 5 (Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: PerformanceOverkill for file serving10GbE and 2.5GbELacks channel bondingWhen I started testing this NAS, I soon realised the platform was largely twiddling its thumbs during large file transfers. Using the 2.5GbE LAN port, no SSD cache and four 4TB drives in a RAID 5 pack, the CPU barely hit 9% usage. And that was shipping a file from my desktop PC at around 290MB/s.Using the 10GbE port increased transfer speeds to nearly 700MB/s, but only added a few percentage points of CPU overhead. With an SSD, this machine can get closer to 1000MB/s, either directly or by allocating the SSD for reading and writing cache.Four 3.5-inch drives don’t have enough performance to fully saturate the 10GbE link without cache support, so adding an SSD is more of a necessity if you're involved in file serving.Gen4 x4 M.2 slots are great for internal SSD performance, but there aren’t many practical ways to use that bandwidth from the outside other than the Thunderbolt 4 port.But unfortunately, the Thunderbolt port on this NAS doesn’t yet support Host mode, even though it is listed as a feature that’s ‘under development’ on the official FygoOS roadmap.Also, while the networking functions enable Multi-gateway mode, where the LAN ports route according to the shortest path to the target system, there is currently no link aggregation/channel bonding. I don’t think channel bonding a 10GbE and a 2.5GbE line together is a good idea anyway, but FygoOS currently doesn’t have the necessary interfaces for this.Because FygoOS is built on a Linux base, users looking to combine multiple network interfaces typically have to configure network bonding manually via SSH or underlying Linux networking tools rather than a native settings panel.On a more positive note, I used a cheap Ugreen USB-A to 2.5GbE LAN port (CM648), and that worked perfectly for what is an incredibly inexpensive option. I know that Ugreen makes a 5GbE version of this adapter, and I suspect that would also be useful in this context.Ideally, this system would have dual 10GbE and SMB multi-channel mode, but in most other respects, this NAS is overpowered for most roles.Performance: 4 / 5Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Final verdictBuy it if you want a compact NAS that you can upgrade later and you like the idea of a modern, flexible OS. Beelink pitches the 13500H model to creative professionals, and it has the core count to back it up.That said, the four-bay market is crowded. Alternatives include the Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus and Pro, the Synology DS925+ and the UniFi UNAS Pro 4. Breaking down the ups and downs of each design would take another article, but to cover the basics, none of them matches the ME Pro 4-Bay Creator Edition.The Ugreen NAS units are cheaper, use DDR5 and include special features like SMB Multichannel and HDMI video playback, which makes them useful.Synology’s DS925+ uses a much weaker AMD Ryzen V1500B quad-core CPU, only has dual 2.5GbE LAN ports, comes with 4GB of RAM expandable to 32GB, and has two M.2 slots that can only use Synology-branded storage. That machine supports ECC memory, but that and the DSM OS are the only real positives.The UniFi UNAS Pro 4 is meant for racks, not shelves, and is an ARM SoC system that supports four HDDs, two M.2 NVMe SSDs, and 2x 10Gb SFP+ LAN ports.It’s cheap, around $600, but the 8GB memory can’t be upgraded, and the ARM architecture doesn’t support Virtual Machines.What I haven't considered are the Asustor Lockerstor 4 models, QNAP, and TerraMaster options, to name a few. But to generalise, most 4-bay NAS don’t compete on processing power, memory capacity, and build quality.The fly in this ointment is that until this product exits the Kickstarter campaign and people have them longer term, will they be able to establish a reputation, good or bad.I haven't had any issues with the machine Beelink sent, and with a few more updates to FygoOS, it could become a useful NAS to own.But for those who have had bad Kickstarter experiences, wait if you need proven reliability. This is a new product on a crowdfunding platform, and the modular upgrade path is so far a promise. But as a first-generation device, the Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition is certainly heading in the right direction.Should you buy a Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition? Swipe to scroll horizontally Value The Kickstarter deals are excellent for NAS of this spec 4 / 5 Design Innovative drawer design that allows for system swaps 4/ 5 Features Powerful Intel CPU, up to 96GB of DDR4, Thunderbolt and three M.2 slots 4 / 5 Software FygoOS is more sophisticated than expected 4 / 5 Performance Two drives limits throughput without SSDs 4 / 5 Overall A tiny powerful NAS that’s ideal for creatives, but it lacks the silicon for AI use 4 / 5 Buy it if...You have a 10GbE networkWith one 10GbE LAN and the 2.5GbE Port as a failover backup, you can distribute 1000MB/s of data over a network easily. And, using the USB or Thunderbolt port, you can get even more network bandwidth.You need lots of RAM for VTBeing able to scale to 96GB of memory enables this NAS to handle jobs that would overrun other devices. It’s also DDR4, which might be cheaper to find than DDR5 at this time. Don't buy it if...You need AI LLMsWhile this machine can run an LLM, the lack of an NPU in the processor holds it back, and you can’t add a powerful GPU, as it doesn’t have OCuLink. If you want AI on a NAS, other machines in this range are better suited.You want Thunderbolt Host ModeWith this system having a Thunderbolt port, I was hoping it would have host mode, enabling a suitable laptop to link directly to the NAS with a 40Gbps link. However, that feature is still to be added to FygoOS, and until it is, that remains a pipe dream. For more NAS solutions we've collated the best NAS hard drives around Mark is an expert on 3D printers, drones and phones. He also covers storage, including SSDs, NAS drives and portable hard drives. He started writing in 1986 and has contributed to MicroMart, PC Format, 3D World, among others. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.