When comparing Western Digital 4TB My Cloud vs Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra, the Slant community recommends Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra for most people. In the question“What are the best NAS enclosures under $300?” Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra is ranked 3rd while Western Digital 4TB My Cloud is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra is:
At $159, this two-bay NAS device offers great value. It's virtually impossible to find another solution close to this price with such a good performance.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Offers excellent value for money
This NAS unit comes with a 4TB Western Digital Red Hard Disk pre-installed. Considering that a similar 4TB HDD would cost $150 by itself, this $160 NAS offers great value.
Pro Easy access via browser control panel
It has a user-friendly control panel that can be easily accessed with a standard web browser.
Pro USB connectivity
If you hook up a USB storage device, you can access its stored files as a regular NAS storage volume.
Pro Very affordable for a two-bay device
At $159, this two-bay NAS device offers great value. It's virtually impossible to find another solution close to this price with such a good performance.
Pro More than capable of managing typical home use
This two-bay unit has a 1.3GHz dual-core Marvell CPU and 1GB of DDR3 RAM. This is more than enough for typical home use, such as web browsing or movie watching. Media transcoding also works great with this device - Full HD videos have a nice and smooth playback.
Pro Simple set-up process
Setting up this NAS is as straightforward as it can get. You can get it running within a couple of minutes, even if you have no previous experience. Inserting the hard disks, plugging it in and filling out a form on mycloud.com is all that it takes.
Pro Save money by choosing one of the pre-populated versions
You can buy this device pre populated with Western Digital hard drives. You can choose between 4TB, 8TB, 12TB or 16TB storage space. This options is more convenient and cheaper than purchasing the hard drives separately.
Pro Users can choose between safety and storage maximization
This unit has two hard disk bays which can support RAID0 and RAID1 configurations. This gives you the choice of maximizing available storage, or halving your storage space in exchange for single-drive failure security.
Cons
Con Slow GUI
GUI is almost unusable due to lag. Moving files around and organizing files already on the drive is a headache.
Con Available with Western Digital hard disks only
Buying this NAS pre-installed with non-Western Digital hard disks is not possible.
Con No data protection features
As with most single-bay NAS units, you risk losing all of your stored data in the event of a disk failure. You can still use an external USB drive to manually backup your files every once in a while, though.
Con Official documentation leaves much to be desired
The documentation lacks important technical parameters such as CPU, RAM size and type, power consumption and even read/write speed. The Western Digital web resource also doesn’t include a list of compatible applications.
Con No offline storage or data migration via USB
Most NAS units typically come with USB ports for connecting storage. However, this unit does not offer USB connectivity, which would have been useful for offline storage or data migration.
Con Official documentation is incomplete and unclear
Key aspects such as power consumption or read/write speeds are not available on the official documentation. On top of that, the list of features is unclear and not explained well.
Con Not as many third-party apps as those found for more well established NAS brands
Western Digital is quite new to the NAS market, so it doesn’t have as many third party applications as other brands. Key applications like Plex Media Server, ARCUS and Dropbox are supported, but you may want to check app availability first before buying this unit.