Thecus N5200XXX review

The provocatively named N5200XXX is one of a range of new NAS appliances from Thecus and claims to be extreme in every way. It hits the spot when it comes to price and in this review Dave Mitchell finds out whether it’s on target for performance and features as well.

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The appliance's capabilities can be upgraded with a good range of freely available software modules.

The appliance's capabilities can be upgraded with a good range of freely available software modules. The IP camera module supports up to five cameras and provides basic surveillance features. However, it's not as good as the equivalent features on QNap or Synology appliances as you can't view live feeds or enable motion detection and it can only take scheduled snapshots at intervals of between one and sixty seconds.

The download station module can be used to retrieve remote files via BitTorrent, HTTP, FTP or eMule and home users will like the new Piczza module which provides a handy remote web photo server for organising galleries, sharing pictures and adding Google Maps links to show where they were taken.

The N5200XXX delivers plenty of NAS and IP SAN storage features along with some serious performance improvements over its predecessor. It's very good value although if you can afford it, QNap's TS-559 Pro II is superior as it offers far more features, supports the latest SATA3 hard disks and is slightly faster.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The N5200XXX may not be as featured packed as QNap’s excellent TS-559 Pro II, but it's much value with a 5TB model costing nearly £400 less. Performance is on a par with most Atom based desktop appliances and its extensive NAS and IP SAN features makes it a good network storage choice for small businesses on a tight budget.

Chassis: Desktop CPU: 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 Memory: 1GB DDR3 Storage: 2 x 128MB IDE DOMs; 5 x 1TB WD GreenPower SATA2 hot-swap hard disks Ports: 5 x USB2; 1 x eSATA Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Software: Setup Wizard, Acronis True Image Personal single license

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.