Thecus N2800 2-Bay NAS Review

Our first look at the TS869 Pro gives a slight sense of deja vu over the smaller TS-419P II that we looked at earlier in the year and in essence they’re both the same chassis, with this effectively being a stretch version of with twice the drive bays. Naturally there are a couple of smaller features that are different, but this is to be expected when you get a bigger and slightly updated NAS.

Looking closely at the top where the status LEDs are, we can just see through the dark plastic front the Thecus logo to the left which lights up when the system is ready and then to the right activity LEDs for both drives, LAN and WAN connections, USB and the SD card reader.

Behind the small plastic door we find the two drive trays which are the same as we find across the rest of the Thecus range and also feature a lock to secure the drive inside the NAS. To the left we find an SD/MMC card reader, USB3.0 and a copy button to transfer data from USB to the hard drives in the NAS. The the bottom there is a power button which lights up white like the status LEDs when the system is on.

Working from the top down, there is a half height PCI-e x1 slot, DC power jack, two USB2.0, eSATA, VGA and HDMI and last of all two gigabit Ethernet ports. Like we found on the N5550, the HDMI and VGA are reserved for a new set of features that are due out with OS5.0 that we got a glimpse of at Computex 2012, allowing the user to connect up a HD capable monitor, mouse and keyboard to watch content directly from the NAS with no third party system required.