Asustor AS5202T Nimbustor 2 2-bay NAS Review

Rating: 8.0.

The 2-bay AS5202T NAS is one of the first members of a new product line from Asustor called Nimbustor, alongside a 4-bay AS5304T model – the AS5304T is the Nimbustor 4, while the AS5202T is the Nimbustor 2. The new model line sees a world's first, with the introduction of 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports to the Asustor range and both Nimbustor models come with a pair of 2.5GbE ports.

At the heart of the AS5202T is an Intel Celeron J4005 Dual-Core CPU. The 14nm J4005 is clocked at 2.0 GHz, with a boost speed of up to 2.7GHz, and supports DDR4/LPDDR4 memory up to 2400MHz. Our review sample came with a single 2GB DDR4-2400 module installed in one of the two SO-DIMM slots but the motherboard supports a maximum of 8GB (2 x 4GB).

Headline Sequential speeds quoted by Asustor are reads of 563MB/s with writes at 561MB/s. However, the devil is in the detail as these figures were obtained using both 2.5GbE connections set up in a Link Aggregation mode. With a single 2.5GbE connection the official figures is 283 MB/s for both reads and writes. The AS5202T also has a dedicated hardware AES 256-bit encryption engine.

Asustor back the NAS with a 3-year warranty.

Physical Specifications

• Processor: Intel Celeron J4005 Dual-Core 2.0 GHz (burst up 2.7GHz).
• Memory: 2GB DDR4-2400.
• Gigabit Ethernet Ports: 2 x 2.5.
• Rear panel connectors: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x HDMI 2.0a.
• Front panel connectors: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1.
• RAID support: JBOD, RAID 0, 1.
• Cooling: Active, 1 x 70mm.
• Drive Bays Supported: 2.
• Maximum hard drive size supported: 16TB.
• Maximum Capacity: 32TB.
• Internal File System support: Default EXT4 but also supports Btrfs.
• Dimensions (D x W x H): 230 x 114 x 170mm.
• Weight: 1.6kg.

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