Over at eTechnix I found a review of the relativlely new Thecus 5-bay N5550 NAS. This is a comprehensive review (19 pages!) with many screen shots and tests. The NAS is typical of Thecus in that it is very powerful, especially when measured against cost. Thus, Thecus NAS servers usually provide very good value for your money.
This Thecus NAS is powered by an Intel Atom CPU and has USB 3.0 ports (besides having the above-mentioned 5-bays available for internal hard drives.) Unusual for a NAS, the device has a VGA and an HDMI port for connecting video devices. With the soon to be released software from Thecus as an update to this NAS, it will be able to double as a home theater pc running such media software as XMBC.
Thecus isn't known for having the most polished software, but over the years it has improved and I would say that the gap between Thecus and Synology or QNAP has narrowed quite a bit:
As I’ve found, the Thecus admin panel may not seem the easiest or most entry level user friendy, but its very thourough and easy to navigate when you know what you’re looking for. Everything is divided into sub categories that are found down the left hand side of the window.
Speed was tested to be great:
Mixing up the read and write tasks, the NAS was able to sustain transfer speeds across the board of around 90-96MB/s.
The reviewer concludes with high praise for this 5-bay NAS:
Yet again I have been wowed by a NAS box from Thecus, and without thinking about it I would happily recommend any of their products to anyone that is in the market for network storage. Watch this space as well, as things are soon set to get a lot better with their new OS for NAS.
Related articles
- Thecus NAS Devices Now Support 4 TB HDDs (news.softpedia.com)
- Thecus vs. QNAP (nas-pro.com)
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