Thecus N2560 2-Bay NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Since I attended CeBIT in Germany earlier in the year and got a look at the N2520, I’ve been eager to get my hands on the new system to see if it still has the ability to give a great user experience from the SoC as opposed to a dedicated CPU. For a 2-bay system that, when compared to the rest of Thecus’ line-up, is rather cheap, I’m pleased to say that the performance is just as I wanted to see. Granted the system is not going to knock out the same extreme levels of data as I have seen from the likes of their Toptower range such as the N7510 that I looked at a few months ago, partly due to its 2-bay design, but when it’s able to peak at over 116MB/s data transfer speed, it’s clear to see that it’s still no slouch when compared against some other 2-bay systems that can be had from other vendors.

The white design that Thecus has chosen here is to be honest not a great deal of a surprise to me – even when I saw it earlier in the year. With more and more vendors targeting the home user who wants a system to store their favourite movies, music and photos on, it needs to look user-friendly as well as looking good in the home environment. If I was to take a black 2-bay system that had bright blue LEDs on it and this system with its white LEDs and put them side by side and ask a few people which they would prefer in their home (ignoring performance and features), I’ve got a strong feeling that this system would get the majority of votes based on its simple clean design.

As I highlighted above, the system is not that expensive to purchase – in fact it is highly affordable for what it is and when it comes to market later in the year in November, it will be hitting the shelves for around £269, whilst the N2520 which has slightly less DRAM at 1GB and a 1.2GHz SoC is set to sell for around £230 inc VAT. Pair this with a pair of hard drives, which themselves are become more affordable and you have a small compact system that won’t upset the bank manager whilst keeping all your files in one convenient location and also offering up media centre capabilities via XMBC.

Hopefully with white systems becoming more popular and home users typically using 2- or 4-bay systems, Thecus will develop a 4-bay version of this unit that will consequently offer up RAID5 storage as unfortunately this is something that a 2-bay system will never be able to give. Should such a system hit the market I have a sneaking suspicion that this would be the first of its type – go get cracking on that one Thecus!

Overall I’m extremely impressed with the N2560 and I know Thecus are too as they have claimed another world first with the first NAS systems to be embedded with a SoC as opposed to a CPU. Given this is a cheap affordable solution, the expectation from some people will be for average performance, however this is not the case and Thecus yet again have shown use why they are the #1 storage leaders.

Pros:

• Well known vendor
• Good performance
• Tool-free installation
• 5-minute setup process
• Affordable solution
• Clean looks

Cons:

• No network redundancy
• No RAID5 option

“With more and more home users stepping into the NAS market, white systems are now a crucial part of any NAS vendors line-up. The N2560 from Thecus is not only a stylish unit, but it packs a good punch for what it’s worth – a top unit for this end of the market.”

Thanks to Thecus for providing us with this sample.