By: Kenneth Kwok
May 31, 2013
One day, I received an email from our Editor-in-Chief asking if I would like to review a product from ASUSTOR. At first, I thought this was a company from some subdivision of ASUS, the PC components manufacturer. Actually, this is not correct, but not entirely incorrect either. When I took on the task of looking up the name, I soon discovered while they are a separate company that makes NAS devices, they are actually an affiliated company of ASUS Group. ASUSTOR's chairman is Jonney Shih, and ASUS is their investor. On the other hand, they actually resemble QNAP quite a bit -- or at least that is what members of the forums have been trying to convince me of. Some members even came together with an idea of creating a new company named 'ASUSNAP', but I personally thought we would get sued pretty quickly. I mean, come on, ASUS + QNAP = 'ASUSNAP' right? My solution for legal problems would be to sell a different line of products. The first thing that came to mind were pillows and mattresses, with a name like 'ASUSNAP', going to sleep would be a breeze. One thing that got me really into the idea was that fact that our line of pillows would require both 'FIRMware' and 'SOFTware' to run, and people would definitely buy a product that had such good marketing. (These puns are killing me...) In all seriousness though, we do have here at APH Networks is a new network attached storage system in for review today that is not from QNAP, but from ASUSTOR. Let's take a closer look at the AS-602T today, and see how well it will fare in our tests.
What surprised me the most when the ASUSTOR AS-602T came in was it only took one day to ship and arrive here. I quickly found out the reason why this was the case. As the shipping method was Purolator Express, this means it was sent from somewhere in Canada, and more specifically, it was shipped from somewhere in BC, the same province in which I reside. The ASUSTOR AS-602T came from a warehouse in Richmond, and it took only one day to get here. Further research indicates it was sent from Supercom, a local distributor. As expected, the Purolator took good care of our package with basically no damage done to the box, although there would be a problem if it came in beat up after just one day of leaving the warehouse less than fifty kilometers away.
The retail packaging of the ASUSTOR AS-602T is very simple. It is basically a brown corrugated cardboard box with a giant splash of color in the middle. This mix of green and black has many words that are associated with 'NAS' and 'ASUSTOR' in general. Fundamentally, it is a repetition of these three words: Network, Cloud, and Storage. They take up about half of the box, and can be found near the center area. At the bottom right corner of this text pattern is the ASUSTOR name, which is printed in black to starkly contrast with the green color of the background. A small label is affixed to the top of the box, and has the usual serial numbers and product information. An additional logo can be found here, as well as a small picture of the product and the model number.
Before we move on, let's take a look at the specifications of the ASUSTOR AS-602T, as obtained from ASUSTOR's website.
After removing two large pieces of foam and taking out our products, we are left with a box full of accessories and the NAS itself wrapped in a foam covered bag to ensure the product does not get damaged during transport. The accessories box is not very large, but it holds all the necessary parts required to fully utilize our NAS. ASUSTOR includes a CD-ROM to go along with the AS-602T, which I can say I haven't seen in quite some time, haha.
The following items are included for the end user:
1x ASUSTOR AS-602T
1x Setup CD-ROM
2x Ethernet cables
8x Screws for 2.5" HDDs
8x Screws for 3.5" HDDs
1x Power adapter & Cable
Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
6. Performance and Power Consumption
7. Final Thoughts and Conclusion
