A Matter of Perspective: ASUSTOR’s AS4002T 10GbE NAS Reviewed

It’s been quite a while since my last review of a NAS unit, that one being ASUSTOR’s AS6208T. Techgage has taken a look at some other NASes in the meantime, however, such as with Robert Tanner’s look at Synology’s DS1618+ last fall.

Today, we’re again looking at an ASUSTOR unit that we’ve been anxious to get our hands on ever since we first saw it in person at 2018’s CES. At our meeting with the company that year, it showed off a then yet-to-be-released product line of economically priced NAS units that, aside from one important feature, were just another yearly update to the product line. In fact, we were so excited, the move was named one of our Best of CES award winners.  That feature? 10G networking.

Now, one might rightfully ask what business 10G has on a slightly above budget priced NAS unit.  We ask that you hold any reservations you might have until you hear us out.

Coming in two options, four and two-bay, we are working with the two-bay variant today.  This is exciting because this is our first look at what performance we can expect to see out of a NAS device with 10G capabilities.  To get to this point we needed to overhaul our test environment, something we will outline in a bit.  To start, let’s take a look at the AS4002T itself.

Hardware

The first thing that stands out on the AS4002T is the angular appearance.  This is something that ASUSTOR brought up at last year’s CES.  It wanted to draw attention to the fact that the company was putting effort into making its NAS units more attractive to those using these devices in their home.

Another aesthetic trait ASUSTOR was happy to show off was the fact that the face plates of the AS4004T and AS4002T were held onto the body of the NAS magnetically.  No doors or screws to access the drive bays; just place it in front of the NAS and let science take over.

This feature is admittedly not an important one, but it is nice to see small conveniences being added.  To the left of face plate we find a power button, HDD and NIC activity LEDs, a copy button for attached external storage, and a USB 3.1 port.

With the face removed, we can see the two drive sleds.  They are not lockable, but they are tool less when using 3.5” drives.  2.5” drives or SSDs will require screws that are included with the unit.

The body of the AS4002T is black plastic with both sides continuing the angular design of the face plate.  With that being said, I have been critical of NAS manufacturers using so much plastic in their NAS units, and having relied heavily on NASes over the last decade, I’m aware of how little these things get touched or even seen.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting to happen, but a body of plastic is, on the list of things to worry about, at the bottom.  Consider this a mea culpa on my part to all the manufacturers I’ve brought this up with in the past.

Around back, we find a pretty spartan layout with one exciting exception.  An 80mm fan dominates the back of the AS4002T and ensures adequate airflow across the NAS’ vital components.  A pair of 1GbE NICs, something common on all NAS boxes today, allows connectivity for users, as well as all the standard options for teaming.  A single USB 3.1 port, bringing the AS4002T’s USB offerings up to two, and a power port.

Sitting above the pair of 1GbE NICs, and the focus of this entire review, is a 10GbE NIC with its orientation inverted relative to the two 1GbE NICs, making it a bit easier to spot.

The specs of the AS4002T are pretty common for NAS units of this size and this price range.  One thing we don’t like is that the RAM is not expandable.  You get 2GB and you live with it.  This is unfortunate, but ASUSTOR needed to keep the price of the unit as low as possible, and this was a good place to start.

Software

The AS4002T was tested with ADM (the ASUSTOR operating system) 3.2.2 and as of writing, the current version is 3.2.4.  One area of focus for ASUSTOR over the last couple of years has been the user experience.  Not too long ago, the industry was playing catch up with Synology and its still-stellar DSM.  It’s fair to say that today, both ASUSTOR and QNAP have pretty well caught up from a user experience.

ADM delivers a desktop like experience, allowing multiple windows to be open, each of which can be minimized but quickly recalled when needed.  This is all stuff that we take for granted today, but it wasn’t too long ago that this type of experience wasn’t possible.

ASUSTOR AS4002T ADM Storage Manager

ASUSTOR AS4002T ADM Plugins And Apps

ASUSTOR AS4002T ADM OS Apps

ASUSTOR AS4002T ADM Activity Monitor

ASUSTOR App

There’s a lot to be said about ADM, but experience is truly the best way to understand what it can do.  ASUSTOR has made this easy with a live demo site.  Here you can test drive the UI and see what it has and what it can offer.  For those interested, go here.

Before we move onto testing and performance numbers, we’d be remiss by not mentioning ASUSTOR’s app store, called “App Central”.  Here you can find 194 apps (at time of writing) and an additional 8 beta apps.  Not only has ASUSTOR worked hard to create a quality UI, it’s also made it a point to add value through software.