Asustor AS1002T NAS review - Asustor Introduction

ASUSTOR AS1002T - NAS / Home Server
Very affordable - VERY FAST Gigabit LAN

The market for NAS servers is highly competitive with names like Synology, QNAP, Netgear, Thecus and ASUSTOR being the more known brands in the consumer segment. 

They all have one thing in common though, NAS servers are expensive for your average end-user. With that in mind ASUSTOR decided to fab a price competitive product. They ripped out the removable trays, there's no LCD display, you get only two USB 3.0 connectors, no HDMI, nope ... you simply get the basics. Remember for a decent NAS server that actually performs well you have to pay anywhere from € 400 to € 600, for this AS1002T you pay, and read it well, € 199,-  (189 USD).

And guess what? It's performing just as fast as a high-end NAS. Read/Write speeds over your Gigabit connection are in the 100 MB/sec range, and thanks to clever software caching of the ADM management software, the NAS OS remains very fast as well. Heck even a quick try with NZBGET (inside the NAS software suit) resulted into 17 MB/sec downloads while the content unpacks and PARs as fast as my PC does. Crazy stuff to observe really, as this little NAS unit only has 512MB RAM and a 1 GHz dual-core ARM (Marvell ARMADA-385) ARM v7 processor. 

It does all that while remaining completely silent, well as silent as your HDD is really. Next to that by using that Marvell ARMADA-385 ARM v7 processor, this NAS unit in IDLE consumes incredibly low amounts of power. We Measured 4 Watts with the HDD in hibernation.

Armed with very capable hardware and an excellent software suite the AS1002T is not only a fast file server, it's loaded with applications and media functionality as well. 

Today's tested model NAS unit can house two HDDs, even has RAID functionality, Gigabit Ethernet, USB (2.0/3.0) and then a heap of software functionality that will impress. This low power and low-cost NAS can download torrents, has an FTP server, a MySQL server, a WEB server, built-in Usenet software like Sickbeard and NZBGET, Torrent downloaders and even an iTunes Server. It's compatible with all major OSes including APPs you can use on your smart-phone, all combined with user and group based management, yeah a proper NAS.

So whether you want to use it as a file server or for usenet or torrent downloading or heck, even install a fully fetched Joomla CMS server, whatever you need is served and it's doing so with more than enough speed and performance. Power consumption with one HDD sits at roughly 10 Watts with one active HDD. So yeah, this NAS might be a bargain deal for many. Have a peek and then let's head into the review.