Asustor AS-204T

A LOW-COST NAS WITH A LOT OF VERSATILITY.

A CHEAP NAS at the low-end of Asustor’s Range, the AS-204T is great for anyone looking for a highly versatile NAS at a cost that won’t break the bank. Like QNAP and Synology, Asustor has very much embraced the many options that having a Linux foundation enables. There is a huge variety of applications and add-ons available for its operating system, and while we favour QNAP and Synology’s first-party apps, Asustor has access to pretty much the same suite of third-party apps. That includes virtualisation, anti-virus, backup, media gallery and services, streaming, cloud sync, transcoding, peer to peer download, telephony, VPN and much more. Like all the NASs here, there is a mobile app for sync and media file access as well as a (very good!) Windows desktop app for backup.

The interface is also very much like that of QNAP and Synology, with a virtual desktop. For beginners, it’s a little more intimidating than the simpler solutions offered by Netgear, Seagate and WD, but if you want more out of your NAS than file sharing, this offers it.

The modest hardware of the Asustor will limit just how much stuff you can load in at once, however. With an older Atom processor and just 512MB of RAM, you’re not going to be transcoding 4K video streams or running a surveillance station with dozens of cameras attached. It was, unsurprisingly, one of the lower RAID 5 disk performers in our test set, though we found the virtual desktop worked snappily enough.

The hardware has a simple and functional design, with relatively easy installation of new disks — though it will require a Phillips head screwdriver to get the job done.