- Protectli Vault Pro VP2420-4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Celeron J6412, 2.5G Ports, DDR4 RAM, M.2 SATA SSD Storage, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD

I went from a NUC that was running OPNsense (and constantly having issues) to this. It’s been a pure dream. It was easy to set up and get running and is now functioning as my firewall, couldn’t be happier. The Protectli documentation is really good. Love this thing!

I've purchased several of these. They are more expensive than some cheap alternatives on Amazon. I have found their reliability and website/support resources to be better than those cheap alternatives as well. Each one I have purchased has worked for me, out of the box. I have several running pfSense, Roon Music Server (ROCK), NAS, etc. All have been working, as designed, for about 3 months as of this review.

Plugged it in, turned it on, four beeps later I checked the website and it tells me if you hear any kind of beeping, it’s likely bad ram or no ram and that you “need ram for this unit to work.” Yeah, well I ordered it with 8 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD and it has neither of those in it. Pretty pissed right now because I paid for expedited shipping and now I have to schlep this to the UPS store to send it back.

I added this to my network so I could run a full state full firewall (PFSense). I have multiple subnets and VLAN’s in my network and this device with the 4 2.5 gig ports provides me with unbelievable throughput across multiple interfaces. The form factor is amazing as it fits anywhere and don’t let the small factor fool you. Four twenty something boys a wife and I both working from home across teams video calls this thing doesn’t even breathe heavy. Best addition to my network in a long time.

I've been using the Vault Pro VP2420 for OPNSense for about 2.5 months now with a 2GB fiber connection, with no reboots during that time, and all has been working really well. At an ambient temperature of 75F it runs at around 50-53C while sitting on a wire shelving unit, so a little warm but not concerning. I appreciate that the case is made out of metal as well and not plastic which undoubtedly makes it run cooler than it would otherwise. As others have stated the price point is quite high for what it is, and that is the only reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5. From a build quality and functional standpoint I'm quite happy with it thus far. As far as OPNSense goes, no issues at all with the installation and the packaged drivers and sensor monitors worked with all hardware out of the box.

Installed Proxmox, it's running PFSense and another ubuntu VM. Cannot complain yet!

I only ordered it for pfsense. My bedroom is also my homelab therefore I did not want anything with fan. very happy with it. I know there are cheaper options but I heard so many good stories about this one and I do not regret buying this.

This is an amazing router. Plenty fast, LOADS of features with PFSense, and is built really well. We are very impressed with the improvements we have seen. Would Recommend to ANYONE

DO NOT BUY. I bought the Protectli VP2420 for 369GBP, the SATA Drives in these devices are defunct and the BIOS can't read them. They will point you to a guide telling you to short CMOS headers (open the machine up and use metal to connect to pins on the board) This solution still doesn't work! Bitterly disappointed, they're selling systems they themselves know are faulty and they've tried to just cover it up with a cheap hardware hack fix - which most people aren't comfortable performing, nor should they have too after spending 350+. Please please please save yourself the money and the wasted time and find an alternative like I now have to! There customer service doesn't seem to care either, even if you mail them they'll just say here's a guid open it up and stick some metal in their then ignore when that doesn't work. Dreadful

Been thinking of buying one of these for a while and finally did last week. Couldn't be more happy with it, it's replaced 2 devices and having no fans it's sooo quiet. I was worried it might get hot but it just sits at a constant 42c. Have used proxmox on it which was up and running in no time at all, then running opnsense plus a bunch of other internal services and not breaking a sweat. The only thing I would have liked is more options through Amazon for configuration, ie a zero ram and SSD option.

Installed opnsense and inserted between my old router and home wifi in about 30 minutes - that's from unboxing to operating. Installed zenarmor and now have all the stats as well as advanced app-level blocking and reporting. Highly recommend for home network. Watched some YouTube videos to prepare.

At the beginning I thought it was good for home use, what I needed is cut some vlan for my home network, and with opnsense installed it get the job done. However after a year this I have found this CPU it can’t handle Zenarmor, every thing push the CPU 100%, which the results is long loading time for everything. For this price? It isn’t good enough, way over priced.

After having the vault for over a month it is still sitting idle, its only use being a very expensive paper weight. I’ve always thought I had “reasonable” computer skills compared to other non computer people. No matter how many tutorials I watch or step by step guides I read, I can not get pfSense working. And that is the only reason I bought the Vault. I guess it’s not any problem with the vault but considering pfSense is one of the first potential software installs that’s listed on the NETGEAR knowledge base page, the instructions are vague and written for someone who has a firm grasp of networking and firewalls. All the YouTubers promoting devices/firewalls like this because us simple folk have routers and modems that are unsafe and the security risk of my smart vacuum connecting to some cloud in china to report that it just ran over dog poo and is now outside upside down and in the rain with a critically low battery, is apparently an unacceptable risk to national intelligence. Do yourself a favour, if you’re not 100% certain that you have the networking knowledge and capabilities to set up a device like this, spend your money on something else…… like a new robot vacuum