NETGEAR ReadyNAS 102 Dual-bay NAS Review

It’s been quite some time since we last checked out one of NETGEAR’s NAS offerings, so we’re going to use the ReadyNAS 102, a dual-bay offering, to help us get up to speed. Unlike the last ReadyNAS we looked at, the 102 features OS 6, and one of our favorite, understated features: Btrfs support.

We have taken quite a few looks at various NAS devices over the nine years Techgage has been online. Most recently, it’s been the QNAP TS-269L and the WD My Cloud EX4. Both products are marketed at similar demographics and as such, they both fill existing needs for the home and small business consumers. In Rob’s recent look at the QNAP, he focused a considerable amount of time on its interface, comparing it to the superb job Synology has done with its user experience over the past few years.

Like QNAP, another company we haven’t looked at recently is NETGEAR. While the stretch between reviews of NETGEAR’s NAS devices hasn’t been near as long as the six years it took to circle back around to QNAP, our last look at a NETGEAR device was the ReadyNAS Duo v2 back in December of 2012. It’s with great excitement that we once again have one of the company’s ReadyNAS devices on our bench, and in an attempt to not only stay alongside its competition, NETGEAR hopes to move ahead with some cool new features of its own.

Today we are working with the NETGEAR ReadyNAS RN102. In our initial talks with a few members of the NAS team at NETGEAR, it was made clear that a significant focus went not into design and hardware engineering, but into the code that users like you and I interact with on a regular basis. With added features like anti-virus and snapshotting, NETGEAR has not only added many additional useful features to its firmware, it’s also made a significant effort to position its interface to be included in the same conversation as other UI titans like the previously mentioned QNAP and Synology.

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