Thecus N4200 Pro 4-Bay NAS Review

The NAS unit itself is quite small in size and can only be described as resembling a Shuttle style computer. Dimension wise sees nothing out of the ordinary when comparing to other 4-bay NAS servers on the market. Even with the added battery which assists when power has been disrupted, Thecus have designed things in such a way that no extra external space is needed. The whole unit is black and looks very sleek and stylish and should blend in with most other units such as your printer and fax machine.

The front of the NAS is quite different from most as it features a dual screen layout, with one orientated vertically and one horizontally. By positioning things in this way, the layout is compact and allows the front to look stylish without being cluttered.

The horizontal OLED screen is capable of displaying your IP address, NAS name once you supply it with one and status updates depending on the task it’s doing. Below this is four buttons for scrolling through to front panel display options.

The front is where we find the drive bays, of which their are four in total and sit behind the door. Each individual tray includes its own independant lock which allows you to secure each drive into place. Due to the mounting points on the bays, various size drives can now be installed with the included screws.

The front door to the chassis has a mesh back panel to allow air to flow through the chassis, keeping the drives cool whilst running.

Along with the active display to the right, there is a secondary display to the left which gives a real time status of each drive individually, USB status and in the middle activity lights for each of the network connections.

Moving round the the back end of the NAS and working top down, we find a single PCI-e x1 expansion slot for adding in an optional USB3.0 expansion card. Below this there is a blanking plate which covers the bay where the built in battery is inserted, the battery is secured into position with a single screw stopping it from sliding out. To the right of this is the four pin power connector.

Moving down from the power and onto the I/O, the N4200Pro comes with four USB 2.0 and two eSATA ports for connecting extra drives and the likes

Removed from their bays we can see each of the four drive trays have simple latch come handle for sliding them out of the NAS. Each of the trays can be individually locked once inserted for improved security.

With a 3.5″ drive installed, the cage neatly hugs the drive with a gap to the front to allow airflow to come through and around the drive when installed and running.

Underneath the drive the cut outs in the tray function in two ways, firstly they allow for air to flow through and to the PCB on the base of the drive and secondly they also make the cages a bit lighter. Whilst this may not be so significant on a 4 bay NAS, on the systems with more capacity this weight all adds up. From the underside we can also see the two sets of mounting points for 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives.

Looking inside the N4200 Pro we can see the motherboard to one side powered by an Intel Atom D525 CPU and 1GB of DDR3 SDRAM. On top of the drive bay area we can see the installed backup battery which functions for around 10 minutes allowing the disks to store unwritten data and safely power down the device in the event of a power failure.