Asustor AS5304t Review, Network Attached Storage Device

Asustor AS5304t Review

This network attached storage device (NAS) is overkill for the majority of users, but it is a powerful device designed for home enthusiasts that enjoy killer gaming style.

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Although network-attached storage (NAS) servers aren’t often recognised for their flashy designs, that’s exactly the approach that Asustor has adopted with its AS-53 series of devices. The AS5304T appears to have been designed with gaming hardware in mind, what with its gloss-black finish, slanted surfaces, hints of red, and blazing indicator LEDs.

This is completely on purpose; one of the applications that Asustor promotes with this NAS is the ability to store 4K gaming live streams on your NAS, and one of the bundled third-party apps, StreamsGood, is designed to play live streams from a variety of popular gaming services directly from your NAS. This is one of the applications that Asustor touts with this NAS.

Asustor AS5304t Detach

If you detach the angular face plate from its magnetic moorings, the AS5304T will function in the same manner as a regular NAS. There are a total of four bays, each of which has a slide-out caddy, and the drives may be attached or removed without the need for any additional equipment. However, if you glance around the rear, there are more obvious clues that indicate that this is not a typical NAS. To begin, the two Ethernet ports provide rates that are quicker than the typical Gigabit standard, which is known as the 2.5GbE standard. With applications such as 4K streaming where the network can hold you back, a faster connection can make all the difference. And with two, you still get link aggregation for performance or failover connectivity. It might be difficult to find a switch that supports it, and you’ll need to buy a new network card from Asus.

About Asustor Nimbustor AS5304T

Asustor AS5304t USB And Other In-Build

On the back, there is also an HDMI port and two USB 3 ports. These could be useful if you want to use the Nimbustor as a Linux desktop PC or a media player on the side, which it can do with its apps. A big 92mm fan takes up most of the space. It works with heatsinks on the main parts to keep the heat in check. At nearly 30dB, the AS5304T isn’t exactly whisper-quiet, but it’s also not loud, and the drives are nice and cool when they come out of their bays.

The same ideas are used in both the hardware and the software. The default desktop interface is straight out of the world of hardcore PC gaming, but you can change it if you want something else. Even though the user interface is different from what you’d usually expect from a NAS, it still has all the usual features. You can set up users and shared folders the same way you would with any other NAS, or you can set up iSCSI targets to use with virtualization. Asustor still has tools for syncing with OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive and backing up Windows and macOS computers. You can even use snapshots and the Snapshot Center app to protect the data on the NAS with the Brtfs file system.

Asustor AS5304t App Store

The built-in app store goes even further by supporting development with Docker, Perl, and Python, Surveillance, and even running VirtualBox virtual machines. And if you want a media centre or a box to download and manage your completely legal and copyright-friendly torrents, the Nimbustor can do that too.

Asustor AS5304t Look And Design

Even though not everyone will like how the Asustor looks, it’s hard not to be impressed by how it works. This one is fast because it has a quad-core Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM. Even when using a standard Gigabit Ethernet network, the AS5304T is a rocket of a NAS. In our sequential read/write and backup copy tests, it was as fast as or faster than the Synology DS1019+. It’s also about the same as the Synology when it comes to copying while streaming 4K content, but we wouldn’t say that playback was as smooth as silk. Still, 4K playback is flawless on a fast network without a lot of activity, and the AS5304T can even handle high-quality 10-bit HEVC files.

For some users, this will be too much, and being able to use your NAS as a Linux desktop or media player won’t matter much. If you want a NAS for business or regular home use, the Synology DS1019+ or DS218+ are better and more cost-effective choices. But if you want a great NAS with four bays for streaming, media, and other things, the AS5304T is the best one we’ve tested. Asustor has made something really great by looking beyond the usually conservative NAS market.

Source: Google Trend