ASUSTOR AS3102T 2-Bay Intel Dual-Core NAS, 2 GB RAM, HDMI Media Player for 4K, YouTube, Kodi, Netflix, Hyper-Transcoding and 4 Free NVR Camera Licenses

This is my first Network Attached Storage device, and the first product I've had from Asustor. I think the kind of people who would be tempted by this device are those who might normally have just bought an external hard drive. An NAS can do so much more than an external hard drive, it's essentially a specialised computer that does a range of simple tasks relating to storage, networking, file management and sharing. It can do things that you wouldn't dream of doing on a simple external hard drive like working as a web server.The S1002T is at the bottom of the Asustor range and this means that everything about it isn't quite as good as its bigger brothers. It has a less powerful processor, half a Gig of RAM that isn't expandable, and the hard drives you install can't be quickly swapped out. It uses 6.6 Watts of power when hibernating which is really quite a lot compared to their other models.Fortunately, after you've turned it on and it sits there impersonating a hair dryer for a minute or so it settles down to being almost silent, except when you access files on it, when the hard drives make the usual crunching sound.I was lucky that I had two old spare 2TB hard drives that I used to test this device. If you're buying new drives, which would probably be a good idea because you want them to last a long time, this is going to significantly increase the cost of the Asustor solution. This will be the case with any NAS manufacturer. I suppose that buying an empty enclosure like this gives you the freedom to buy the amount of hard drive storage you need or can afford. It does bump the overall price up though. Assembling the S1002T is very easy. The case is easy to open and hard drives slot inside in a very obvious way. The "fun" happens when you have to set up the Asustor software, initialise your drives, and set everything up. I spent a frustrating lot of time Googling every time I got an error message, and this was my main point of criticism for this device. Network Attached Storage has a history of being very technical, but now it is affordable you would have thought that manufacturers like Asustor would have made the process of setting it up extremely friendly. If I were just rating the Asustor ADM software that sits on this device, I would rate it about 6 out of 10. This is the one thing Asustor need to focus on to make this device easier to use. Stop it giving unhelpful error messages, make it easier to set up. I think the problem may be that it's a victim of trying to do too many things at the expense of making everything a little bit harder to achieve. The good thing I guess is that as ADM improves this can happen without causing you to go out and buy a new device.

The file sharing aspect is excellent. The various tools provided make it quick and easy to access files from a laptop or phone. You can store all your large files on the NAS and map seamlessly as a network drive, allowing you to keep the local HD on your laptop clean.However... the main selling point for me was the HDMI output, which should have allowed me to play videos directly from the NAS on my non-smart TV. This was a disaster. After spending hours setting up a Plex server (apparently you can't just play the files), video was unwatchably choppy. A tool is provided which allows you to transcode the videos for smooth playback. This tool was almost unusable (transcoding would just randomly fail on some runs and work on others). I eventually got a video transcoded... and it was still unwatchably choppy.So, forget about the HDMI port, and watch videos on a smart TV or laptop. Use it as a simple NAS and it works fine.Some of the apps are very useful. Elephant Drive backs up continuously to the cloud, which gives extra piece of mind on top of the RAID1. It's so good that I'm thinking of changing to RAID 0 to double my storage. And the transmission BitTorrent Pi's great. BT is an ideal application for the relatively slow CPU - it just runs quietly in the background, and download speed is the limiting factor rather than processor speed.

Easy to set up, and to use. Good variation in Apps for what you need to use it for. Nice stylish black box which is small enough to hide away. Only negative is it didn't come with a UK mains plug, it's sold with a US style one, which wasn't a problem as it's a normal standard euro connector to 3 pin (kettle lead).

Simple and easy to use. Nothing fancy but fast for backups for private use. Very happy with it.

A network attached storage adds sort of a middle man to a digital storage set up. So instead of going from computer to a hard drive, this goes Computer > NAS > Hard drive, with the NAS being a server-like computer that accesses the hard drives allowing multiple computers to access them. In laymans terms, imagine it like a home version of dropbox. The build quality is good and the design works well to be placed openly in a room and it doesn't look too techy or awful. It's a good size and i've put mine within a bookshelf, as its height fits perfectly to the size of a standard paperback. It requires constant power (Power cable included) and the website shows a EU 2 pin plug, but this one does come with a UK 3 pin plug. The positive thing to NAS drives is the accessibility from anywhere to the drive; for me it's probably the biggest selling point for them, so that when you're at work in a meeting 300 miles from home and you've forgot a spreadsheet, it can be accessed in the morning and downloaded by lunch.The issues however I have with this is that it's usability is awful. I understand computers pretty well and before this had no idea what a NAS drive was until researching it and understanding it, but i'm still a rookie user that's never used one before, and the setup interface is very confusing and annoying. I find this contradictory considering it's specs are very much designed for the first-time NAS user, or NAS within a family home. Setup from the disk was actually fine and straightforward, but what annoys me is the specialist apps that are made by Asustor that have to be used with the system, and the requirement for an Asustor account of every computer that wishes to access it. I find it similar to buying a cheap tablet that's not a known branded one; there's always these clauses and 3rd party things that are frustratingly required.Overall it works but I find it a bit unusable in its current state. Pitched as an entry-level family home server, it's too slow to handle the volume and size of movies or music files that would be more common within a family home, and the most likely files to warrant sharing on a public access hard drive. It would be much better used as a document sharer between personal computers - so for example a work laptop, a windows laptop and say a mac all owned by the same person, to have a NAS that could allow 1 hard drive to be accessed by all 3 computers to share small word documents or photographs. But then the price wouldn't warrant it's use considering it doesn't come with the hard drive storage.