Reviews ยท 6 written up

Hardware and software, measured not guessed

Hardware runs the same workload set for ninety days before it gets a score. Software gets tested in a tenant with real users in it. Nothing here is sponsored and nothing here is a referral link.

Everything tested so far

showing 6
All topics Compute 2 Endpoint 2 Homelab 4 Storage 2
Mudita Harmony 2 on a bedside table beside a bed, E Ink display showing the time

Hardware · Endpoint In daily use

Mudita Harmony 2 E Ink alarm clock

The best executed bedside clock you can buy, and the only one whose design actually assumes the phone has left the room. The constraint is not the hardware, it is that a gradual alarm on an invisible display asks more of you than a supermarket LED does, and at 143 dollars it only pays for itself if the phone genuinely goes.

Display
2.84 inch E Ink, 600 x 480, 270 DPI, 16 levels of grey
Front light
2700 K, multiple brightness levels
Processor
Arm Cortex-M7 600 MHz, 4 GB storage
Battery
2600 mAh Li-ion, up to 45 days claimed
UPERFECT GR16HQ review: the 16 inch 3K OLED portable monitor on its folio stand

Hardware · Endpoint In testing

UPERFECT GR16HQ 16 inch 3K OLED portable monitor

A superb OLED panel wrapped in a sloppy EDID. The hardware is wide-gamut, 10-bit, HDR10 and FreeSync capable, but a false sRGB flag, a fake 27 inch size and 120 Hz modes hidden in the DisplayID block mean it needs two minutes of Windows settings and a capable GPU to show what it can do.

Display
16 inch OLED, 2880 x 1800, 16:10, 212 PPI, 10 bit per colour (EDID)
Advertised modes
3K at 60, 100, 120 Hz; 2560 x 1600 at 60, 100, 120 Hz; 1920 x 1200 at 60, 100, 120 Hz
Pixel clock, 3K 120 Hz
671.23 MHz, 16.11 Gbps at 8 bit, 20.14 Gbps at 10 bit
Variable refresh
AMD FreeSync block, 48 to 120 Hz
Playwright MCP 0.0.79 review banner: 24 tools exposed, 84ms warm navigate, 31.8k tokens per snapshot

Software · Compute Protocol-level testing

Playwright MCP 0.0.79 browser automation server

Fast, complete and officially maintained. The constraint is not speed, it is that one snapshot of a content-heavy page can eat 31,800 tokens of context.

Version
@playwright/mcp 0.0.79, Playwright 1.63.0-alpha
Runtime
Node 22.23.2, official Docker image
MCP protocol
2025-06-18, streamable HTTP
Tools exposed
24
Jellyfin 10.11.11 review banner: 4.9 second boot, 140 MiB idle memory, 3.79x realtime 1080p to 720p transcode

Software · Compute Partial - wizard only

Jellyfin 10.11.11 media server

Boots in under five seconds and idles at 140 MiB, a fraction of anything else here. Transcoding on a laptop CPU tops out around two 1080p streams.

Version
Jellyfin 10.11.11, single container
Transcode engine
Bundled FFmpeg 7.1.4-Jellyfin, software x264
Tested on
i5-10210U, 4 cores / 8 threads, no GPU acceleration
Boot to API
4.9 s from up -d
Paperless-ngx 3.0.5 review banner: 100 percent OCR field accuracy, 11.4 seconds per document, 1.16 GiB idle memory

Software · Homelab Single session

Paperless-ngx 3.0.5 document management

Read all 120 fields off 24 synthetic scans without a miss, and idles at less than half what Immich needs. The easiest self-hosted stack here so far.

Version
Paperless-ngx 3.0.5 (postgres + tika compose)
OCR engine
Tesseract 5.5.0, OCRmyPDF 17.4.2
Tested on
i5-10210U, 4 cores / 8 threads, 7.62 GiB to Docker
Test set
24 image-only A4 PDFs at 150 dpi, 2.17 MB
Immich v3.1.0 review banner: 24.4s cold start, 2.42 GiB idle memory, 743.7% peak machine-learning CPU

Software · Homelab Single session

Immich v3.1.0 self-hosted photo server

Installs in half a minute and never wobbled. It is also not a lightweight photo app: 2.42 GiB idle and it will take every core you own.

Version
Immich v3.1.0, pinned IMMICH_VERSION=v3
Tested on
i5-10210U, 4 cores / 8 threads, 7.62 GiB to Docker
Host
Windows 11 Pro, Docker Desktop 29.6.2, WSL2
Library
120 generated JPEGs, 35.0 MB, full EXIF and GPS

Method

How a score is reached

Hardware gets three nodes, one sustained backup window and a deliberately hostile firmware update. Devices that fail the update test do not get a score at all, they get a paragraph explaining what happened. Software gets a real rollout: rings, a rollback plan, and a note on what the admin experience is like at 2am.

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How these reviews work

No. Nothing on this site is sponsored and there are no referral or affiliate links. Review units are bought or loaned, and loaned hardware goes back within thirty days of publication with a note on the review page saying so.

At least ninety days in a working 4U rack, running the same workload set every time: three compute nodes, a sustained backup window, and one deliberately hostile firmware update. Power is logged at the wall and noise measured at one metre.

Software gets a real rollout in a tenant with real users, in rings, with a rollback plan. The score reflects what the admin experience is like at 2am, not what the feature list promises.

It does not get a score. It gets a paragraph explaining exactly what happened and at which stage, which is usually more useful than a number.

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