Designed for users who prefer to store and stream their own music, video, and other content-rich multimedia files, the Asustor AS5304T ($479) is a four-bay NAS device that offers top-shelf hardware, including dual 2.5-gigabit LAN ports with link aggregation, embedded 4K video decoding, and a powerful quad-core processor. It's easy to install and uses tool-free drive sleds, and it offers an extensive catalog of apps that let you use it as a media server, a backup solution, an IP camera surveillance station, a web server, and more. It also delivers speedy file-transfer performance. All this makes the AS5304T our Editors' Choice for multi-bay NAS devices.
All the Storage You Need
The AS5304T shares the same design as its two-bay sibling, the AS5202T. It uses a black enclosure with red accents and measures 6.6 by 6.8 by 9.0 inches (HWD). The four front-loading hot-swappable drive bays are protected by a magnetic cover and use toolless sleds that will accommodate 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives.
As with the AS5202T, you'll have to supply your own hard drives. The front of the enclosure has LED indicators for power, system status, hard drive activity, network activity, and USB activity, as well as a power button, a One-Touch Backup button, and a USB 3.2 port. The rear panel holds two 2.5-gigabit Ethernet ports, two additional USB 3.2 ports, an HDMI port, and a power port. The LAN ports support link aggregation that can bring combined throughput speeds of up to 5Gbps, or they can be used for load balancing and network failover.
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The AS5304T is powered by an Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core processor running at 1.5GHz, 4GB of DDR4 RAM (expandable to 8GB), and 4GB of flash memory. It supports 4K video decoding and can be populated with up to 64TB of internal storage. An expansion unit gets you a total of 256TB of storage. The device supports Btrfs and EXT4 file systems and RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, and Single Disk. A single 120mm fan keeps everything cool.
The Asustor Data Manager (ADM) operating system, which is used by both the AS5304T and the AS5202T, is easy to use and offers colorful desktop icons that make it simple to configure the NAS. To create RAID volumes, configure iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) targets, and check the health of each installed disk, use the Storage Manager icon. If you're using the Btrfs file system, this is where you can access Snapshots (backup images).
Tapping the Access Control icon allows you to add and remove users, create user groups, assign access rights to folders and apps, and create shared folders, and tapping the File Explorer icon takes you to a screen where you can manage files and folders. Backup and Restore allows you to configure and schedule local and cloud backups, restore a previous backup, and configure remote syncing. To enable SAMBA, CFIS, and Mac file services, join a network group, and enable SNMP network monitoring, tap the Services icon, and to configure network settings, control fan speeds, and configure energy-saving settings, tap the Settings icon. The Activity Monitor lets you monitor CPU, memory, network traffic, and disk usage, and you can see which services are running and how much memory each service is currently using.
The ADM's App Central provides links to more than 280 downloadable Asustor and third-party apps. Here you'll find apps that let you press the NAS into service as a mail server, a cloud server, an IP camera surveillance station, a web host, a VPN server, and much more. Multimedia apps include Sounds Good (music player), LooksGood (video player), UPnP Media Server, Photo Gallery, Plex Media Server, Podcast Generator, and TVMosaic.
Quick and Quiet
It's very easy to set up the AS5304T. I installed four Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives, connected the NAS to my router, powered it up, and opened a browser on my desktop PC (you can also use the AI Master mobile app). I entered start.asustor.com in the address bar, downloaded and launched the Asustor Control Center software, and the NAS was immediately recognized. I clicked the Uninitialized button, which initializes the drives and uploads the latest version of ADM and used the one-click setup option. I chose a balanced configuration (RAID 5) with the Btrfs file system, which yielded a total of 27.2TB of storage. The system needed 13 hours to synchronize the drives, after which I was ready for testing.
The AS5304T was extremely quiet and turned in speedy scores on our file-transfer performance tests in which we transfer a 4.9GB folder containing a mix of music, video, photo, and office document files between the NAS and a desktop PC connected to the same network and record the write and read speeds. It's score of 98MBps on the write test was identical to the Synology DiskStation DS1019+ and faster than both the Synology DS419slim (87MBps) and the QNAP TVS-463 (79MBps). The AS5304T's read score of 96MBps was the fastest of the bunch. The Synology DiskStation DS1019+ was a close second with 94MBps, the Synology DS419slim managed 87MBps, and the QNAP TVS-463 garnered 85MBps.
Worth the Cost
The Asustor AS5304T is an excellent choice for users seeking a versatile network-attached storage device that can stream 4K video, serve music, store large blocks of data, and provide a total network backup solution. It may be pricey, but it's equipped with high-end components and delivers fast file-transfer performance. And its user-friendly ADM operating system makes it easy to install, configure network settings, manage backup routines, and monitor disk health. Throw in a robust catalog of apps that let you use the device in a multitude of ways, and you've got our new Editors' Choice for multi-bay NAS devices.
The Asustor AS5304T is a powerful four-bay NAS device equipped with top-notch hardware and a generous catalog of apps.
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