Nathan Reynolds

I have been building external storage for my Mac for over a decade now, and the jump to Thunderbolt NVMe enclosures has been the single biggest leap I have ever seen. My old Thunderbolt 2 setup maxed out around 850 MB/s, and the best Thunderbolt NVMe enclosures for Mac today push real-world speeds above 5,000 … Read more

If you have ever tried to back up a 4K project on a single external SSD, you already know the pain of waiting. Files copy, then stall, then overheat. After three months of testing eight different multi-bay NVMe RAID enclosures on my editing desk, I finally found the setups that actually deliver desktop-class speed in … Read more

I’ve spent the last three months pulling apart, building inside, and stress-testing ten of the most popular 4U rackmount cases you can buy right now for a DIY NAS. My goal was simple: find the best 4U rackmount cases for DIY NAS builds that actually hold up when you load them with 8 to 24 … Read more

I spent the last three months testing smart home hubs across three different homes to find the best smart home hubs for Home Assistant that actually deliver on their promises. My test setup included a 1,800 square foot house with 47 Zigbee devices, a small apartment with mixed Matter and Thread gadgets, and a workshop … Read more

I’ve spent the last three months swapping Z-Wave controllers in my own 2,400 sq ft home, ranging from a basic SmartThings hub to several 800-series USB sticks paired with Home Assistant Green. After running dozens of automations, testing range through brick walls, and stressing each controller with power outages, I can confidently say the best … Read more

I’ve been running my house on local-first smart home hubs for the past three years, and the difference is night and day. Lights turn on in under 50 milliseconds, routines fire even when my ISP is down, and my family data never leaves the building. After spending the last 90 days testing eight contenders side … Read more

I have spent the last three months testing wired camera kits in real homes, dragging Cat6 cables through attics and crawlspaces, and recording footage at 3 AM to see which NVRs actually deliver on their marketing promises. After running side-by-side footage comparisons across 8 PoE security camera systems, the difference between a $340 PTZ bundle … Read more

Setting up security cameras that actually work with Frigate NVR and Home Assistant used to mean digging through forum threads and praying your WiFi camera would not drop a stream every other hour. After spending the last three months testing eight cameras across our home lab, I can tell you the situation is much better … Read more

When I installed my first security camera system ten years ago, I left a 2TB drive recording 24/7 in my garage and walked away. Six months later, the footage caught a package thief I’d never have known about. That single event sold me on the best surveillance NVRs for continuous recording, and I have been … Read more

I’ve been running a home server for the better part of a decade, and nothing taught me the value of a UPS faster than watching my NAS array corrupt during a freak summer thunderstorm. One second my Plex library was streaming to the living room, the next second my drives were making a sound I … Read more