Thecus plays in their own category with the N7710-G for the SMB market, where the company admittedly has lots of experience. The unit is pretty strong and comes with a 10GbE network card that allows for lightning-fast network speeds if you have compatible networking equipment. The N7710-G is the strongest NAS I have tested so far, which is in no small part due to its 2.9 GHz CPU and the 4 GB of DDR3 ECC RAM it packs, so its good overall performance came as no surprise to me, although I expected even higher speeds in our single-client tests. Yet it performed amazingly well in its most probable daily routines, our multi-client tests, leaving every other NAS I have evaluated in the past far behind it. The only downsides of the N7710-G's strong components are its increased power consumption and its relatively high output noise, both factors that aren't considered crucial to a business environment. Enthusiast users with the money and in search of a highly capable NAS for use at home will probably be troubled by the noise its three fans produce. I believe Thecus's engineers could easily adjust fan profiles to make the unit far more silent at low temperatures.

Regarding its software bundle, which is just as important as the hardware, Thecus offers a mature and reliable OS that, however, requires much work before it can meet the competition's advanced interfaces head on. It may include all basic features and functions an experienced administrator will look for, but I still noticed enough omissions that need to be addressed fast. There is no support for custom widgets, for example, and features to format external storage devices are still missing. The IP surveillance module is also pretty poor in its design and the features it provides; it definitely needs to be re-designed immediately. I also believe Thecus should construct the firmware it uses from scratch, like QNAP did a while ago, to leave the current UI behind for a windowed interface. Overall, the menus and the icons ThecusOS uses look rather outdated, especially compared to modern interfaces by the competition. However, set aside its look and ThecusOS offers enough functionality to get the job done quickly and reliably, and it is snappy and well-supported by a very active community that constantly develops new modules to greatly enhance its usability. However, there lies another problem I spotted as installing an application or a module in ThecusOS needs to be a more straightforward affair that allows the user to check on all available apps via a nicer interface. In other words, Thecus has to completely change how their application center is structured to make it more user friendly. The competition is strides ahead of Thecus in the area, and it is nigh time Thecus changed something to keep up since providing so many modules and applications over such a poorly implemented UI is a real shame.

Another thing I didn't like much was the limited functionality of the official IP camera module. While the competition offers truly amazing applications, Thecus didn't bother to implement something similar by sticking to a pretty basic application that greatly restricts the unit's surveillance capabilities. Strong hardware components simply aren't enough if you don't back them up with the right software packages. They need to put much more effort into building a sophisticated application with support for a large number of IP camera if they want to compete seriously in the surveillance market. The current application even gave me problems with my very popular Foscam IP camera which was so easily recognized by the competition's corresponding applications.

Like all NAS servers I tested in the past, it took numerous days and countless hours to test and evaluate the N7710-G unit, which inevitably led to many findings, some good and others bad. I know for a fact that I am extremely critical of the hardware, both as a user and reviewer, because I demand perfection in everything I use or test, so many of the things I noticed probably won't bother a regular user. However, I had a really expensive product on my test bench this time around, which inevitably leads to high expectations. The N7710-G thankfully left me with a very positive overall impression regardless of the numerous flaws, or, put better, omissions I spotted. It is very fast, currently the fastest NAS I have evaluated in multi-client scenarios, very reliable, and well built, offering a ton of capability because of the strong components it packs. The section definitely in need of much work before it can cope with other similarly priced offers is the software itself, and I believe Thecus needs to do something about it. Thecus will probably easily meet the competition eye-to-eye in terms of software, which is really important for a NAS server, by pushing their programmers more and hiring some software engineers with experience in building intuitive interfaces. If a reliable operation and fast network speeds with multiple clients are the bottom line for you, the N7710-G will be an ideal candidate, especially if you have compatible 10GbE network equipment. I am pretty sure Thecus's whole package will become much more appealing to a wider portion of users if the company manages to provide a more appealing interface while adding to the features of some basic modules.