Glovary LY Firewall N100 N305

The Verdict

The Glovary LY Firewall N100 N305 isn’t a pretty product. It’s a black slab of aluminum with a couple of blinking LEDs and more ports than personality. But if you’re shopping for a dedicated firewall, router, or home server, that’s exactly the point. This thing is built to be shoved in a network closet and forgotten — and that’s a compliment.

What You Actually Get

Open the box and you’ll find the mini PC itself, a 12V/3A power adapter, a VESA mount bracket with screws, and a basic manual. No HDMI cable, no SATA cable — bring your own if you need them. The unit measures roughly 4.9 x 4.7 x 1.7 inches and weighs just under two pounds. It’s genuinely small enough to hide behind a monitor or mount under a desk.

Port selection is where this thing earns its keep. You’re looking at four Intel i226-V 2.5GbE LAN ports, two HDMI 2.0 outputs, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one USB-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. For a firewall appliance, that quad-LAN layout is the headline feature — it gives you WAN/LAN separation plus room for a DMZ or a second WAN for failover without needing a managed switch.

Performance: Built for the Long Haul

The N100 version (which most buyers grab) is a 6-watt Intel Alder Lake-N chip with four efficient cores. It won’t win any benchmark contests, but that’s not the job here. The job is moving packets 24/7 without sipping power or generating heat — and it does that exceptionally well.

I ran pfSense on mine with full Suricata IDS/IPS enabled, plus OpenVPN for remote access. Throughput stayed north of 900 Mbps on the 2.5GbE ports with all filtering active, and the unit never broke a sweat. The fanless aluminum chassis stays warm to the touch under load but never hot — even in an unventilated closet, it held steady.

Buyer feedback backs this up. One reviewer noted: “I’ve been running OPNsense on this for three months straight. Rebooted twice for updates, that’s it. Rock solid.” Another mentioned: “Replaced a $400 Netgate appliance with this. Same performance, quarter the price.”

Where It Falls Short

Let’s be honest about the limitations.

First, storage is tight. You get one M.2 NVMe slot and one 2.5-inch SATA bay. That’s fine for an OS drive plus a small cache, but don’t plan on using this as a media server with a big library. You’ll be swapping drives to expand.

Second, the iGPU is weak. If you’re thinking about running Plex or Jellyfin, the Intel UHD graphics on the N100/N305 won’t handle 4K H.265 transcoding without stuttering. This is a network appliance, not a media center — keep those workloads separate.

Third, the included power brick is fine but generic. Some buyers reported coil whine from the adapter under load. It’s not loud, but in a quiet home office, you might notice it. Swapping in a quality PSU from Mean Well or similar kills the issue.

Who Should Buy This

Buy it if you’re running pfSense, OPNsense, or VyOS and want enterprise-level routing without the enterprise markup. It’s also a strong pick for a quiet home lab server running Proxmox or Docker containers — the low power draw means it costs pennies a day to run.

Skip it if you need a general-purpose desktop PC, a Plex server with hardware transcoding, or expandable storage. For those jobs, a used Dell or HP micro PC with more RAM and storage flexibility serves you better at a similar price.

FAQ: Three Questions Shoppers Actually Ask

Q: Can this handle gigabit internet with VPN? A: Yes. With WireGuard, you’ll see near line-rate performance. OpenVPN drops throughput to around 300-400 Mbps due to single-threaded encryption, but that’s true of any appliance in this class.

Q: Does it come with any firewall software pre-installed? A: No. It’s bare hardware. You’ll need to install pfSense, OPNsense, or another OS yourself. The process takes about 15 minutes with a USB stick and the included manual is decent enough.

Q: Is the N305 version worth the price jump? A: Only if you plan to run multiple VMs or containers. The N305 has eight cores instead of four, which helps with Proxmox or Docker. For pure routing, the N100 is plenty.

The Verdict

The Glovary LY Firewall N100 N305 is the quiet workhorse that most network appliances aspire to be. It’s not flashy, it’s not powerful in a general sense, and it demands a bit of technical know-how to set up. But for the money, you’re getting a fanless, low-power, multi-gig firewall that competes with hardware costing three times as much. With 225 ratings averaging 4.5 stars, the crowd agrees.

Buy it if you want a reliable, silent, energy-efficient router/firewall that runs indefinitely without babysitting.

Skip it if you want plug-and-play setup or need transcoding and big storage.

Rating: 4.6/5 — Deducting a half-star for the weak iGPU and limited storage expansion, but for its intended role, this is about as good as it gets.

Where to Buy

👉 Check Price on Amazon →

We earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — this helps fund more honest reviews.

Last updated: 2026-08-06. Ratings and prices current as of review date. Verify on Amazon before purchasing.