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

It works, and it works great. Yes, a little pricey, but Ive had no issues with running pfSense on it. My old pfSense overheated and died on me (used hardware that lasted 5+ years), and I bought this to replace it.

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.

I use this as my firewall/router at the colo facility Im hosted at and it is a solid unit, does not require any maintenance or cuddling and very compact design.

Very disappointing. Ive had raspberry PIs and even older PCs run far longer 24x7. Cheaply made and clearly did not do a good job dissipating heat.

It is hard to imagine this device pushing packets higher than 1Gbps because the web UI of PFsense is slow on this hardware despite being solid state storage. So far it works ok but for the price of over $300, I expect a hell of a lot better performance. On the positive side it is absolutely quiet and doesn’t generate much heat. I love the 4 NICs in such a small footprint. This was the best priced device I could run PFsense on which was completely solid state. For that I am thankful but it would be nice to do this for at or under $200 or with a lot better performance. I will try to upgrade RAM later and see if this aids the web UI response times.

Got this to protect a 1U server in colo. 100Mbps symmetrical on the WAN and a few VLANs to route. CPU performance is OK for the wattage but cant touch a bigger box for VPN or IDS/IPS performance. Its perfect for what I need though.

As long as you know what your trying to do it’s a good product

I run pfSense on this unit, which is a truly superior routing solution. If you have been running DD-WRT-style firmware on proprietary hardware (i.e., prosumer wireless routers), this is a major step up in terms of reliability and horsepower. It can easily process 500mbps traffic through the firewall--which is my current ISP maximum--and terminate VPN traffic at about 100mbs. It will presumably run OPNsense--or your favorite full Linux distribution--without a hitch.

I was a bit nervous about this unit after reading other reviews but have this up and running and it runs quick and actually really cool (CPU temp 80 degrees). Barely warm to the touch. I have it running pfSense and it is able to keep up with my 1G connection quite well while even having a OpenVPN connection continuously open (all traffic not going through it obviously).

My Protectli Vault FW4B has its mSata screws locktight/glued from the factory. This makes zero sense considering you have to install your own storage. The screws used are very low quality and strip immediately. Buyer be warned.