Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

A NAS unit isn't mainly about the hardware that much anymore these days. The secret sauce of it all remains to be the symbiosis of the OS, and ADM v4 certainly delivers, the new v4.0 revision is a much-welcomed addition but is a prologued revision based on the current v3, and not an opverhaul. For this, NAS, ASUSTOR uses a more economical hardware solution aimed at the broad consumer base that moves towards 2.5 GigE ethernet. Unfortunately, it has to be said that the Realtek SoC is not 100% capable enough to give the NAS the full performance it needs. For your software applications and streaming movies etc., it is totally fine, really. However, at pure read performance, we're not able to flood that 2.5 GigE jack with full throughput of 100%. Write performance weirdly enough, is faster and as expected. This means the SoC has a bottleneck somewhere. How important that is to you is only a question that you can answer as no matter what, you're still hovering well over 225 MB/sec (1600~1800 Mbit/s) throughput at any time with linear read/write loads over that 2.5 GigE connection. But strictly speaking, the SOC limits this.  

SSDs or HDDs?

Prices of SSDs are getting lower and lower, now reaching a 10 cents per GB level. Personally, if you do not need huge volume sizes, I would recommend SSDs, really, not just for endurance and the removal of mechanical moving parts, but also these devices are lower power ones, you'll save on energy. It would help if you always weighed in that a NAS is likely powered on 24/7. QLC NAND-based SSDs are a great fit for a NAS as storage often is cold data, meaning it'll sit there a long time, not massively overwriting valuable NAND cell cycles. We do miss the fact that this unit does not support NVMe SSDs, as these are cheaper to purchase in bigger volume sizes rather than SATA3 storage units.

Hardware

The Realtek RTD1296 Quad-Core, 1.4 GHz CPU certainly delivers decent enough performance for the software suite, and even with what I deem the limited 2 GB NAS DRAM system memory, the device copes with this all really well. If you plan to stream and transcode, please select the theater mode in the NAS, as here 512MB of memory will be dedicated for exactly that functionality. But the fact that this option is there also indicates that there were bottlenecks in that segment that needed to be addressed bottleneck-wise, as why otherwise would there be such a feature inside the NAS?

Some minor points then; as stated, the SoC can not cope with the full 2.5 Gigabit throughput the NAS is specced at when you copy from (read) the unit, but we deem the NAS certainly fast enough for its target audience; consumers,. You're still moving around a movie or ISO at well over 200+ MB/sec. We do feel this to be very acceptable but not super. The 2GB DRAM feels too low for this unit; 4 GB memory for a NAS is much sweeter. I would have been fine with the 2GB if it could have been upgraded manually to 4GB, but the feature to add a SODIMM is lacking as well. Again, the ADM software stack is incredibly efficient with memory so for your normal usage, this is not an issue. We can add 4x HDD or SSDs to the unit; the tray caddies take both. We do miss NVME M.2. slots, though. The unit has one single 2.5 GigE connection; 5 GigE or 10 GigE, of course, is a far better match. But realistically, the SoC would never be fast enough to handle such speeds either. 

Pricing

At the time of writing, this NAS unit is released at give or take $249/US for the two-bay model and $329/US for the four-bay model with quad-core proc, 2GB, and 2.5 Gbps jacks. It is a really fair amount of money to spend for a consumer, for SOHO/business, usage rather affordable. You do, of course, need to factor in the extra costs for HDD/SSDs. If you want to make your LAN infrastructure compatible with multi-GigE, you will need to invest in a compatible 2.5/5/10 Gbps switch. Long-term, though, that's an investment that will last you many many many years. Client wise; if not all .. most high-end motherboards already have some form of an Intel/Marvell/Aquantia 2.5, 5, or 10 Gbps Ethernet jack, saving the additional cost on the client-side of things a 10 Gbps Ethernet NIC.

Energy Efficiency

In a single SSD/HDD setup, the NAS in its entirety consumes roughly ~7 Watts, which is hugely impressive for any NAS unit these days. Add to that your extra SSDs or HDDs, and you will get a pretty clear idea of power consumption. If your HDDs are not used for, say, 30 minutes (or your own configured sleep time), they'll go into sleep mode and thus do not use any superfluous power. The unit also offers hibernation mode; the unit will go to sleep and consume less than a watt when sleeping; waking it up again, however, involves pressing a button or using a smartphone app to activate it by WOL. A feature that ASUSTOR has implemented is Wakeup over WAN, meaning outside your network, you can remotely wake up the unit. Very handy if you are on the road and do not want your NAS to be active 24/7. ASUSTOR offers very energy-efficient NAS units, which is important considering they likely will run 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. If I do some really rough math here, let's say we consume 15 watts averaged out based on three HDDs/SSDs. ((0.015 Watt x 24 hrs) x 365 days) x 0.21 KWh/Eur = 26 Euros cost per year.

 

Guru3d-recommended

Final Words

The Asustor Drivestor 4 PRO is a NAS that leaves us with somewhat blended feelings. For the 329 USD you need to pay, you get among the best NAS OS software suites available, with always up-to-date apps being secure and feature-rich. Personally, I do not cherish the SoC used though; it seems the Realtek RTD1296 runs out of stamina a bit too soon for 2.5 Gigabit read throughput, which was exactly why you'd opt for this unit, right? It is a bit nitpicking as under any condition, you'll be at a nice 225 MB/sec for reads/copy from. Weirdly enough write performance is faster, above 265 MB/sec for writes. Other than that the unit is incredibly energy efficient, though. Albeit it has only 2 GB DRAM, it manages that system memory extremely well as we did not run into any memory issues or usage shortages. An upgrade option to 4 GB would have been the way to go. For now, you can then enjoy a performance in that 200~265 MB/sec range over your LAN with this specific NAS. Again, it is a recommendable NAS, with an ingenious software suite; but it is slightly underpowered by the Realtek SoC. We also find the fan's acoustics level a notch too noisy to have the NAS sit next to you, which we've never noticed on any other ASUSTOR NAS to date. We do think it's time for NAS manufacturers to take NVMe more seriously, as such storage units, simply put, are faster, smaller, and cheaper. Paired with a three-year warranty, we can certainly recommend it though. The pricing we feel is a notch high for this 4-bay unit; we could really recommend it if you spot it for 299 USD/EUR. 

Give ASUSTOR a visit here.

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