Asustor Nimbustor 2 (AS5202T) is a new model from the Asian house designed for home storage or for the professional, with an eye to the world of gamers, or rather streamers.
As usual for Asustor models, the price / performance ratio is interesting and also the software sector, constantly growing, offers various opportunities even in roles other than the one for which it is proposed.
Asustor Nimbustor 2, the review
My name is Nimbustor, Asustor Nimbustor
Unlike several other brands, Asustor invests heavily in packaging, finding interesting solutions right out of the box, which doesn't seem austere and essential like most NAS on the market.
Once opened in the product, this immediately shows itself in its elegant black suit, with a glossy front cover (which covers the two slides in a magnetic way) and the red logo that gives it a decidedly aggressive look: it's hard not to think of a James Bond at a gala evening, with a red rose in his buttonhole.
The front is dominated by the glossy plastic cover, with the function LEDs alongside and a USB-A socket. On the back, two more USB-A ports, one HDMI, power, and two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports, which support link aggregation. In addition to the Asustor Nimbustor 2, the package contains two Ethernet cables and the external power supply.
Once turned on we noticed, for the first time in an Asustor NAS, that one of the available themes is custom made and exclusive to the model, with a black and red tone (complete with logo) that recalls the external look.
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Capacity and speed
We used the Asustor Nimbustor 2 together with a 12TB Seagate IronWolf drive, in conjunction with a 500GB Angelbird Avpro SSD: first we tried various RAID configurations with two drives (single drives, JBOD, RAID 1 and 0 are supported) and then opted for the use of a single 12 TB disk (more than enough space for all needs) and an SSD used as a cache, an operation that ADM, in version 3.4, allows you to perform in a very simple way.
The choice, which does not provide any redundancy and which appears completely unprotected, is designed to maximize speed, given the large capacity of the IronWolf disk combined with the extreme speed of the SSD.
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All this in order to make the most of the 5 GbE speed given by the use of both connectors, in aggregation, placed on the back (and colored red for the occasion): all through a Netgear XS716T-100NES ProSafe switch. (compatible with the 10Gbe standard), which guaranteed, data in hand, a passage of almost 530 MB / s both in reading and writing from a Mac mini 2018, data that slightly exceeds 200 MB / s using a single cable ( 2.5 GbE standard).
These numbers guarantee the ability to stream to the most popular platforms and, at the same time, also to archive the recording locally, provided that the entire network structure (router and switch) supports the 10 GbE standard.
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ADM and App
The above data are offered by the goodness of the network cards but also by the Intel J4005 dual-core processor (2.7 Ghz) with an accompanying 8 Gb of RAM.
A first-class hardware sector (in particular for the CPU, a first in the sector), able to make the most of not only ADM, the operating system and all the services, but also all the numerous Apps in the store, constantly growing .
The impression we got is that the Asustor Nimbustor 2 is comparable in speed and calculation capacity to the AS6404T model tested a couple of years ago, but with much less effort in operations. The noise appears slightly lower (with the same disks) and obviously the use of the network is smoother, due to the greater bandwidth given by the 2.5 GbE connector.
As is our custom, to prove the veracity of the thing we immediately installed Plex and checked with some titles streaming on the Apple TV, without the transcoding showing signs of fatigue beyond the due.
Something more
To want to see the defects we could say that we would have liked to have been able to mount M.2 / NVMe SSDs, increasingly interesting in the market, to overcome the two bays that in some cases are few (but we will come back to this point later. ).
In addition, a USB-C port suited us very well, especially in the Mac area where this standard is now very widespread.
Considerations
The vote for a product like Asustor Nimbustor 2 is certainly high: the NAS is powerful, versatile in the Apps, thanks to an easy network management, all in a perceived silence, if like us you are used to certainly noisier devices.
We do not see real defects, even if there is certainly something better, but for those who want a robust, valid product, which offers important performance (therefore also suitable for those who are streamers, as the graphics of the product) this is a completely appropriate answer.
However, the writer admits that, being able to choose, he would opt for the Nimbustor 4 model (AS5304T), which in addition to offering two more bays, with greater possibilities to play on RAID levels, offers a more capable processor (quad-core) with an increase price certainly lower than the real gain.
More details on the new Nimbustor on the official page: here for the Nimbustor 2 model and here for the Nimbustor 4 model.
Pro:
• Elegant case • Really powerful but quiet • Two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports with aggregation
Cons:
• USB-C port missing • Improved mobile app
Price:
• 369.00 Euro (Asustor Nimbustor 2) • 539.00 Euro (Asustor Nimbustor 4)
Asustor is distributed in Italy by Neostar and the products are available in various stores in the peninsula, but can also be found online. We used 12TB Seagate IronWolf disks in the test.
