Asustor AS5402T, 2 Bay NAS, Intel Quad-Core 2.0GHz CPU, 4x M.2 NVMe SSD Slots, 2x2.5GbE Ports, 4GB DDR4 RAM, For Gaming and Live Stream, Network Attached Storage(Diskless)

The unit is easy to set up, Asustor's documentation is good. Performance seems fine so far.The construction is solid, and the disk mounts are easy to use.

If you are like me and are a newby at running a NAS, you will find that the learning curve is a little steep, to say the least. Little by little I am getting it, though. I want to use it as my own cloud and eventually as a website host. There are lots of different apps to choose from to use the NAS to it's fullest. The initual hookup is pretty simple.

I've only ever owned Synology NAS units. I've owned several over the years. Haven't had a NAS for a couple of years and felt it was time to remedy that. Synology has gone in a weird not-customer-friendly direction lately -- they are engineering it so you are *urged* to purchase their over-priced NAS hard drives and get error or warning messages if you upgrade the memory with non-Synology RAM (Synology's own RAM is also horribly overpriced). And they seem to be falling behind in that they still only offer gigabit ethernet ports on their consumer NAS units.But Synology is tops when it comes to their NAS software, it's easy to use. But their hardware is not top-tier.So I evaluated several of tehir competitors' offerings and came up with Asustor having the best value proposition - superior hardware, but their software is a little unpolished, but their software gets the job done. More importantly is that they include 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports, 4 NVMe SSD ports, and the ability to use any compatible RAM and HDDs without the NAS pestering you with errors or warnings.So far it's been good. As fast as I expected, has been stable. So far it's been a more economical choice over Synology. As long as you are responsible with your settings and how you expose (or DO NOT expose) your NAS to the internet, you should be good to go.

This NAS has been a great addition to my network. As a Nextcloud, file server, and web server it is beyond a 5 star rating. Asus app store makes everything simple. If you need a NAS, you need this solution.

Excellent backup storage solution for my wife's photo collection. It is a bit noisy while reading/writing. It sits on my office desk and stays quiet most of the time. works great!

This is my first NAS and I tried Synology and Buffalo before choosing Asustor. 2.5gb is real plus, since I use as a backup device (19tb of music) as well as storing photos (45K photos+1tb Video). No issue with heat as reported by some. Run 2x18tb in RAID 0 for performance. Yes, the OS utilities are a relatively crude compared to others, but totally adequate. Use Plex for accessing photos while travelling. Performance is excellent. Occasionally disconnects maybe once/month, but not something chronic or fatal IMHO. Like the NMVE's and have 2x1tb as well as upgrade to 8tb memory. If you're looking for a home-based, high-performance, value-oriented NAS, this is the one. Highly recommended!

I've had a D-Link ShareCenter for years but it's not been without issues. Had to downgrade my Windows SMB service to 1.0 to maintain connection and file transfers were on the slow side. What prompted me to finally replace the system was a desire to improve a Plex server I maintained on an old laptop. I wanted something that did not reset itself at unwanted times and an easy mechanism to add more media.My storage needs are not that great but wanted to maintain RAID 1 so the Asustor seemed to fit the bill.Installation was straightforward with good setup apps. As I was reusing disks from my D-Link, I needed to off-load all data and reload onto the Asustor but this was mostly an unattended process. The only issue I had was to disable SMB 1.0 on my PCs to allow the higher security versions to work.The Plex install went smoothly and I soon had a stable server up and running. A nice bonus was the Asustor android apps that allow remote access to files.I have not tested this product as a media center although it has the HDMI port and several media player apps.A word of warning, as this machine has a heart of Linux, several of the apps listed in the app center appear to assume the user has some knowledge of the Linux OS. I suspect there are many that are simple to set up but be prepared to dust off your reference books for others.

I docked one star because you absolutely HAVE to install one ssd and set it as the main volume during setup OR you will suffer the song of a billion grinding hard drives that never stop working. They definitely did a good job on this and about the only improvement I can think of would just be to improve OS of the NAS so that it doesnt have constant activity even when it should be idle. This thing can make a bit of noise when both drive bays are busy, I don't recommend putting it near an area desired to be quiet.I docked 3 more stars over a year of use later. Why? It restarts often, causing it to be disconnected from my PC and also it beeps loudly every time it finishes booting, often in the middle of the night. No idea why it restarts often, I have looked into the settings and nothing says anything about automatic restarts and I have to manually approve updates so it isn't updating. I believe it is just an unstable mess seeing as how 90% of the time that I go to connect to it, its offline because its restarting. This thing is a pain in the A**. Do yourself a favor don't get a NAS unless you absolutely need it, and if you do, build one.After this experience, next time I'll either just add more storage to my PC or just build my own NAS.