Introduction

We would like to thank Asustor for supplying the review sample.



Look at high-end NAS servers and Asustor comes up as a company that has and still is taking huge steps forward with such new releases as its two rack-mount servers and the AS7004T, AS7008T, and AS7010T, which is more than enough to address the needs of small- and medium-sized business environments. Asustor also managed to catch up to the tough competition pretty quickly despite being a new company to the rather hard-fought-over NAS market, and their products, especially their software, have nothing to be jealous of when compared to operating systems that have been developed and refined over the many years before Asustor's appearance. The key factor to their success wasn't only their ability to adapt to the NAS market's rather special needs quickly as most people working for Asustor had already spent some time time working for other NAS brands before.

In today's review, we will take a look at the AS7004T. Its hardware is very strong for a NAS since it utilizes a dual-core Intel i3 processor where almost all competing offers of the category use Intel CPUs with less processing power instead. The i3 is backed by 2 GB of RAM you can upgrade to 16 GB, so we expect this NAS to perform incredibly well no matter what. The AS7004T, as its model number implies, can take up to four HDDs, and its HDMI and S/PDIF ports allow it to easily handle an enthusiast's multimedia needs. A large number of USB and eSATA ports and two Ethernet ports that support port trunking complete the bundle. The NAS also has an LCD screen that can provide its user with invaluable information; you can even perform some basic administrative tasks via the display without the need of a client.

The AS7004T is definitely an interesting NAS since it has all the features an administrator would crave while also meeting the needs of enthusiast users with its fast network speeds and rich multimedia capabilities. But let's not get ahead of ourselves as a NAS not only depends on its hardware but also its software; it is the software that insures the hardware is exploited fully while running reliably. Simply put, a really strong NAS without perfectly optimized firmware doesn't stand a chance against QNAP's and Synology's competing offers since the latter have put years on end into developing their top-notch firmware, which sets the bar incredibly high. However, our previous experience with Asustor's firmware left a very good impression on us, and given they are actively releasing firmware updates quite often, we are very curious to see how their offering will compare to those from QNAP and Synology.