Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review

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Asustor Introduction

Asustor Drivestor 4 PRO NAS (AS3304T/2.5 GigE) 
A persuasive, feature-rich 4-bay NAS unit at a reasonable price of 329/US

ASUSTOR, in an effort to bring you a more affordable yet convincing fast NAS, just released their Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS which we review today. The unit is powered by a new Realtek RTD1296 Quad-Core 1.4 GHz CPU and includes Multi GigE Ethernet in the form of a 2.5GigE connector. This SOHO NAS is aimed at distinct audiences, including consumers that stream. Realistically though, it might be one of the most interesting NAS units we have tested to date as it is only 329 USD for a 4-bay unit. A nuance here, the Drivestor 2 Pro and 4 Pro retail for $249/US and $329/US.

The Driverstor 4 PRO comes fitted with familiar ASUSTOR looks and offers a more known design. The AS3304T, with that 4 for 4 HDD/SSD trays, has been fitted with a more affordable Realtek RTD1296 processor, who's a quad-core with frequencies that sit in the 1.0 GHz range with a max turbo to 1.4 GHz. Each of these four cores is, in fact, a Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 (64-bit). Paired to it is a Mali T820 MP3 GPU (4 shader cores) that will offer enough processing power for 4KP60 and H.265/VP9. Realtek 1295 will find its way not only on NAS units but also TV boxes and OpenWRT routers. This new model is aimed more specifically at a pro-consumer. In our belief, though, every household should have a NAS unit. The idea for this series is that digital data storage and functionality like streaming are becoming more important. If you require speedy and large capacity storage for videos streamed to multiple devices, then here's where the NAS comes into play. It has four 3.5" and compatible 2.5" slots (can hold both HDDs and SSDs). If you have a 2.5 Multi-GigE Ethernet infrastructure, you can reach ~300 MB/sec over a single ethernet jack; the processor is plenty fast enough to keep that file-stream locked and loaded. These key features alone make this a truly proper performing NAS, period. It has all the features you know from Asustor, but now even more.

  • Realtek RTD1296 Quad-Core 1.4 GHz CPU
  • 2 GB DDR4
  • 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet
  • Enjoy, download, upload, and stream content with 4K transcoding.
  • Supports Wake on LAN and Wake on WAN
  • Tool-free installation

The RTD1295 processor series is actually a High Definition Media Processor SoC (System-on-Chip) for Consumer Electronics featuring a Trusted Execution Environment with an independent secure operating system, VP9 and H.265 decoding up to Ultra HD, Full H.264 HD media Decoding and Encoding with multiple formats, Wireless/Wired Networking, HDMI Receiver, DTV, and a comprehensive set of High-Speed peripherals. That means that both the native media applications from Asustor and Plex Media Server will support transcoding (Plex does require a premium subscription to activate that, though). So that offers plenty of performance whilst remaining energy efficient as well. A NAS is, in fact, a server, so it'll need some system memory as well. Included is 2GB of DDR4 (SO-DIMM) memory; unfortunately, that is not upgradable towards 4 or 8 GB. power consumption is rated to be 10 Watts in IDLE (disks sleeping) and 23W in operation. We'll check that out further in the review. The OS that manages it all is ADM, now at revision v4.0. And I have seen this software quite grown over the years to something mightily impressive, stable, and most of all, secure. ADM is paired with an easy-to-use desktop GUI (graphics interface). Included software with your Asustor NAS purchase offers lots of first-party media handling applications, file management, backup tools, and system tools. There is also the newer docker/container application for running smaller virtual environments; VirtualBox is supported for bigger VMs and has ClamAV Protection intrusion, malware, viruses, and more. The problem with NAS units and reviews is that they are so feature-rich that a standalone review can hardly describe all functionality. But trust me when I say, ASUSTOR is way up there offering everything and anything you need. 

Today's tested model NAS unit has four HDD bays (hot-swappable) that are RAID compatible. This NAS might be a terrific low power option while providing a small server in features. By the way, these units receive a nice 3 warranty. Have a peek at the product, and then we'll dive a little deeper into the review. 

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