Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: 30-second review
This 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 noise
The 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 availability
How much does it cost? From $819
When is it out? On Kickstarter soon
Where can you get it? Only on Kickstarter initially
The 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. 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. 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
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)

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: Design
Drawer concept
Easy access to some upgrades
Lots of screws
The 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 / 5
Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Features
Intel Core 5 13500H CPU
Up to 96GB of memory
AI capabilities are limited
As 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…