Asustor AS6602T review: This NAS is a super streamer

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Asustor AS6602T review: This NAS is a super streamer

Asustor’s NAS-box offerings continue to impress, with the $399, two-bay, AS6602T (LockerStor 2) being the latest to come through the lab. It sports a more business-like look than the recently reviewed AS5202T (Nimbustor 2), and it adds M.2 NVMe slots for caching SSDs to the mix.

It’s the same high-quality, 2.5GbE product as its cousin at its core, but NVMe caching is expensive overkill for the home environment. 

Design and specs

At first glance, I was far more impressed with the the business-like styling of the AS6202T than the “gamer-oriented” look of the AS5202T. The front is still black, but with a matte finish, and the all-metal shell is pewter. It reminds me of QNAP back in the day, but with more sculpting and defntely more style. It’s a very impressive-looking box.

What’s inside is equally impressive. There’s 4GB of DDR4-2400 memory and a latest- gen Intel Celeron J4125 CPU running at 2GHz. There’s a second SODIMM slot if you want to expand the memory to 8GB. And to jump the gun on the performance discussion, an investment in additional memory versus NVMe might deliver a better return than for most users.

The two 3.5-inch bays feature push-button release and are combo metal/plastic rather than the pure plastic that most boxes this price use. There are no quick-change rails, but I’ll take the small hassle of screws if it means metal over lastic. 

The front of the AS6602T hosts the power button, a single 5Gbps Type-A USB port, and the typical power and drive status/activity LEDs. On the back, are two 2.5GbE (RJ45) ethernet ports that can be aggregated for better performance. There are also two additional 5Gbps Type-A USB ports, an HDMI 2.0a output, a Kensington lock port, and a barrel-shaped power jack.

as6602t b Asustor

Asustor outfits the AS6602T with dual 2.5GbE ports, as well as twin 5Gbps USB ports and a 4K HDMI output for external displays.

As with the recently reviewed Synology DS720+, the AS6602T has two M.2/NVMe slots for SSDs. Unlike the easy-access panels on Synology’s box, the AS6602T requires that you remove the shell and a PCIe adapter card to install them. The Synology approach takes less than a minute, the Asustor 5 to 10 minutes. That’s not really a big deal since installing SSDs is likely to be a one-time operation—if you do it at all—but it’s worth mentioning.

This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best NAS boxes for media streaming and client backup, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.

OS and apps

Asustor calls its Linux-based windows-in-a-browser operating system Asustor Data Master, and while it’s not quite as mature as those delivered by QNAP and Synology, it’s darn close—and getting closer.

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