Thecus N5810 Pro Zero-Crash 5-Bay High-Performance NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Thecus N5810 Pro is a brand new unit and it’s only about to hit the market at the end of this month. As such there aren’t many listing yet, but I did find one shop that has it with an ETA for 5th May at a price of €799.00.

Overview

Thecus created an impressive piece of machinery with their new Zero-Crash 5-bay N5810 Pro unit. The quality is great from bottom to top, inside and out. The NAS is built on a solid metal structure and it also got a metal casing, both help to keep everything as it should be as well as with the heat dissipation. The only plastic on the unit is the front panel, a given.

The CPU is a Intel quad-core Celeron J1900 with a 2GHz core speed and it comes with 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. This is plenty of power to run multiple apps, services, and the HTPC function at the same time and without the NAS breaking into sweat. Even high-demanding features such as SQL databases just as web and email servers will run smoothly on this unit.

With five drive bays, 5 Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, three USB 3.0, HDMI, and also line-out and two USB 2.0 ports, the N5810 Pro has it all covered. The only thing that is missing a little bit is the eSATA connector, a think I personally like to use and do use a lot. I did however find an extra SATA port inside on the motherboard, so it could be added.

You can set the LAN ports to fail-over and Link Aggregation and achieve up to 500MB/s transfers speeds on this unit. That’s quite impressive, but of course requires both the target machine and the drives to support the same speeds. The built-in LCM display with its four navigation buttons at the bottom of the unit provide an added usability and convenience. You can easily access vital information and logs from the display without the need to connect to the web interface or connect a monitor directly.

The operating system works like a charm and it’s fast. The Thecus OS has a classic interface design, it works great, and again, very fast. The overhauled OS is fast at booting which is a wonderful thing when re-configuring your settings as well as after a power outage where it has to reboot. The official app site has over 700 worldwide apps listed, so there’s a great chance that you find what you’re looking for, if it isn’t already a built-in feature.

Having a direct and built-in uninterrupted power supply, or UPS, is an amazing feature and one that should be present in every single NAS. While it’s just a mini-UPS, it will allow the device to shut down properly and without data corruption and loss. Another big bonus is that you don’t need to worry about compatibility or settings, all you have to do is define how it should act on a power loss and when it resumes.

The HTPC feature takes it all to the next level and it’s most likely to be used in a home environment rather than the office. Just connect a HDMI monitor and extra speakers if the monitor doesn’t have them built in, a keyboard and mouse, and you’re ready to surf the web, watch movies and your photo albums, change the settings, or pretty much anything else you fancy.

Security is an important factor, both physically and digitally. The drive trays can all be locked individually to prevent sticky fingers from running away with them and the LCM display also features password protection. You can create backups to the cloud, other NAS devices, and local drives, and you can even burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray disks directly from the NAS by using an optical USB drive. The disk clone and wipe feature further add a list of protection and Thecus even included a copy of McAfee AntiVirus and Acronis with this unit.

Pros:

• Powerful CPU and plenty of RAM
• Five Intel-powered Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Five bays allow for extra redundancy
• Built-in LCM display
• HDMI and Audio out for full HTPC usage
• Build quality is top-notch

Cons:

• No eSATA

“Whether you’re a business with a big office and lot of staff or just a power-user that likes to have the best of the best, the Thecus N5810 Pro is a safe choice. There is plenty of performance, a huge range of features, an abundance of connecting options, and security features. The N5810 Pro has it all.”

Thanks to Thecus for providing us with this review sample.