ASUSTOR’s 10 Series NASes Are Stylish And Affordable, But Don’t Sacrifice Performance

NASes offer a wide-range of benefits for both the home and business user, but it’s not hard to understand why some people don’t opt for one: the up-front cost. “Awesome” NASes cost about $400~$500 a pop, and the drives that can be added to them (eg: 2 x 6TB) can cost the same. For many, that’s a little too harsh.

Fortunately, though, there are many solutions out there for those who don’t need the highest performance or the beefiest feature sets. Take ASUSTOR’s brand-new 10 series, for example, where the two-bay variant is priced at $179, and the four-bay, $289. That’s not too shabby, but the specs do reflect that pricing.

Under the hood of the AS1002T and AS1004T is a dual-core Marvell processor, clocked at 1GHz, along with 512MB of memory. For ports, there is a USB 3.0 available at both the back and front, as well as a singular gigabit Ethernet port. It’s nice to see that ASUSTOR didn’t opt to include just one USB 3.0 port, as the back one could be used for additional static storage, while the front could be used for backing up to or from an external drive.

Sporting a “diamond plate” design, the 10-series NASes from ASUSTOR have no intention of looking like lower-priced models. Also, performance isn’t sacrificed much, either. ASUSTOR says that average read speeds will be 110MB/s while write will be 96MB/s. Further, installation will be a breeze, with a completely toolless design.

Both models of this NAS are available right now, although at Amazon, the two-bay variant is priced at $10 more than the quoted $189 price, while the four-bay is $50 more than the $289 quoted price. It goes without saying, if that’s the model you want, you’ll want to shop around, or wait for prices to come closer to SRP.