Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay NAS review

We liked

The Personal Cloud is really easy to set up and the interface is incredibly simple. It almost (but not quite) gives Synology a run for its money.

It's also really straightforward to add remote users, and share files with them. The torrent downloader isn't perfect, but it's still something that will appeal to a lot of people.

We disliked

The Personal Cloud isn't the fastest NAS we've ever used. With torrents coming down, the poor CPU becomes stressed and the interface is then notably less responsive.

Separately, write speeds are rather low when copying files to the NAS. We've seen better results from some USB 3 devices.

Given how good the software is, we'd love to see a cheaper diskless version, but since Seagate's main business is selling hard disks, this is unlikely.

Final verdict

The Personal Cloud is a great NAS that's unfortunately let down by poor write performance, and (at certain times) a weedy processor that slows down the interface.

This is a real shame because I loved using it and would certainly recommend it as a home NAS unit. The sharing features work really well (after some tinkering in your router's settings) and it makes a great way to watch your stored movie collection when away from home, perhaps on a wireless connection in a hotel.

If Seagate can iron out a few of the performance problems in a future variant of the Personal Cloud, it will be an absolute winner, but even as it stands, this is still one of the best home NAS units on the market.