INTRODUCTION

   As we've already pointed out numerous times in reviews posted both 2016 and 2017 several studies project that by the year 2020 most households (at least in both the USA and EU) will have at least one NAS (network attached storage) device installed. This may sound as bit extreme to some people (especially the ones who are not aware of the benefits of owning one) but NAS devices have risen a lot in popularity in the last 2 years (sales numbers clearly show this) not only between professionals but also home users. Because however most NAS models in the market by manufacturers like QNAP, ASUSTOR, Thecus and Synology require a good level of knowledge to setup and use others like Promise Technology do their best to cater to the needs of casual consumers and after testing their Apollo Cloud 4TB NAS today with us we have their latest Apollo Cloud 2 Duo 8TB model.

   Promise Technology is a recognized global leader with 30 years of experience in the storage industry. Promise creates innovative solutions tailored to the unique needs of the IoT, Cloud, IT, Rich Media and Surveillance markets. From personal cloud appliances to scalable enterprise IT Infrastructure, blazingly fast post-production tools, video security solutions, and hyperconverged systems, Promise adapts its products to meet the real-world challenges customers face every day. Promise’s highly experienced sales and engineering teams are strategically located throughout the Americas, EMEA, and JAPAC regions to provide unparalleled services and support to its customers around the globe. For more information, visit: www.promise.com.

    Just like with the single HDD Apollo Cloud 4TB NAS the dual HDD Apollo Cloud 2 Duo 8TB (also available with 2x2TB hard disk drives) is aimed towards home users looking for an easy to use model primarily for file sharing purposes (both local and remote/Cloud - supports sharing of files to up to 40 people). Under the hood Promise Technology has placed a dual-core Marvell ARM v7 Cortex-A9 CPU (clocked at 1GHz) which they have paired with 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM, two 3.5" hard disk drives (2x4TB in our model - hot swappable for quick removal) which can be configured both in RAID0 (all 8TB are used as storage) and RAID1 (4TB storage space with the other 4TB used as a mirrored backup), single USB 3.0 port and an RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port. Just like its predecessor the Apollo Cloud Duo offers several features including quick camera roll backup (allows the end user to instantly backup pictures and videos from a smartphone and/or tablet with the swipe of a finger), location based & facial recognition photo albums (helps catalog your photos either by GeoTagging or by identifying people in them), time machine support (lets you backup multiple Mac's to the same Apollo and also supports incremental time machine backups over the Internet), Cloud sync (backup all your data to the Apollo from Google Drive and Dropbox) and IP camera recording (from up to 2 IP cameras - unfortunately compatibility is currently limited to just 12 models by Amcrest, AXIS, Instar, WansView and D-Link).