Asustor AS5402T NAS
A month ago, Asustor reached out to us to introduce their company and their wealth of network attached storage devices. Asustor is a subsidiary of ASUS, which is a highly known consumer electronics brand in the world.
Asustor has a diverse collection of storage solutions that are made for various markets: consumer and business. In this article, our focus is one of their latest network attached storages, the Asustor AS5402T
The Asustor AS5402T NAS is a powerful 2-bay network attached storage device designed for home power users and content creators. Packed with high-end features, this NAS punches well above its weight class. It is now available via PCWorx in the Philippines for PhP23,580.
Superb Performance with NVMe SSD Caching
One of the standout capabilities of the AS5402T is its four M.2 slots for installing NVMe solid state drives. These blazing fast SSDs can be used for caching to accelerate data transfers to and from the mechanical hard drives.
The caching really shines for workloads with intensive random I/O like video editing, gaming etc. Stuff that would normally bog down traditional hard drives gets a massive speed boost with the SSD cache handling that random data access. Asustor has implemented good cooling for the M.2 slots as well to ensure the SSDs can sustain peak performance.
Insane Network Speeds Up to 5Gbps
On the networking front, the AS5402T brings dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports to the table. When combined using link aggregation, you can hit eye-watering transfer speeds up to 5Gbps! This is a game-changer for transferring large media files over the network. I have not personally tried link aggregation due to limitation of my available subscription at the studio but it’s a feature that I would to be able to try later on.
With 2.5GbE support becoming more mainstream on enthusiast motherboards and affordable USB adapters, the AS5402T is really future-proofed for high-speed networking needs.
4K Multimedia Monster
The AS5402T is designed to be the centerpiece of your home entertainment setup. It has an HDMI 2.0b output capable of 4K 60Hz video playback with HDR and 10-bit color support. This is handy especially if you are into watching your personal collection of videos and movies.
But it gets better – the integrated GPU allows for hardware transcoding of 4K 10-bit H.265 video streams on the fly. This means you can stream 4K videos to multiple devices simultaneously even if they don’t natively support that video codec.
When combined with apps like Plex, you get a full-fledged multimedia server to organize and stream your entire movie/TV library with metadata scraped from the internet. And yes, Plex and other video streaming applications for self-hosted and NAS systems are available to be downloaded and installed on the Asustor AS5402T NAS.
Optimized for Content Creators
If you’re a video editor, content creator, photographer or any kind of creative professional, the AS5402T has a ton of features tailored just for you. In fact, Asustor has partnered with Adobe to optimize their NAS solutions to work seamlessly with creative apps like Premiere Pro, Lightroom etc.
The SSD caching, insane network speeds and 4K video transcoding make this NAS an absolute beast for video editing workflows involving large 4K footage. You can edit projects stored on the NAS over the network without copying them locally first.
Robust Data Protection
Data security is a top priority for Asustor, with the AS5402T offering multiple layers of protection. It runs a Linux-based OS with built-in firewall and antivirus scanning to secure your network and files.
You get file system snapshots, scheduled backups, and even RAID redundancy to protect against disk failures. Asustor’s proprietary MyArchive technology creates versioned backups to guard against ransomware attacks.
But what really stands out is Asustor’s recommendation to implement a comprehensive 3-2-1 backup strategy across your NAS, cloud services, and external drives for true data resilience.
Asustor Data Master is a Standout Software
The AS5402T runs ASUSTOR’s proprietary ADM (ASUSTOR Data Master) operating system, with the latest version 4.0 bringing a host of new features and improvements that I totally dig!
Asustor Live is godsend for streamers
One of the features that I really love – and my real favorite – is Asustor Live. This is a software that allows you to use the Asustor AS5402T as a tool too rebroadcast your live podcast or game.
When streaming on a specific platform – Facebook, for instance – you’re already using a significant amount of RAM, processing and GPU power. This is so much tasking on your computer should you decide to stream to two different platforms. With Asustor Live, you will only have to feed your stream to the app (downloadable at App Center), and let it stream to your favorite streaming platforms.
There is plenty of platforms available, including a custom RTMP server, which Tiktok, Lazada, and even Shopee use in their live platforms. Setting Asustor Live is pretty easy as well, you only need to feed Asustor Live’s RTMP and Stream Key to your streaming application, and setup the rest of other platforms on Asustor Live dashboard. A quick restart of Asustor Live and Docker apps on the ADM will automatically apply all changes you’ve made, and you should be good to go.
All-New Dark Mode
One of the highlights of ADM 4.0 is the new dark mode interface theme. This makes extended usage more comfortable on the eyes, especially in low-light environments. The login screen can also be customized with your own brand designs and logos.
Smoother Search Experience
The revamped search functionality in ADM 4.0 allows you to quickly find files and data across your storage volumes. As you type, it returns results in real-time for a smooth search experience akin to modern operating systems.
Web Center for Easy Web Hosting
The new Web Center utility makes it easy to set up a web server and host websites directly from your NAS. This is a convenient option for personal sites, blogs or even dev/staging environments. This is totally a must-have feature also for small-medium enterprises (SMEs).
These are just some of the cool software features that are worth-noting for me, and I am sure there would be more as I use this NAS over the next few months.
The Asustor AS5402T brings enthusiast-grade performance and a versatile feature set to the 2-bay consumer NAS segment. With its 4 NVMe SSD slots, 2.5GbE networking, 4K transcoding capabilities and robust data protection, it is an absolute powerhouse for home entertainment and content creation needs.
The Asustor AS5402T is now available at PCWorx for PhP23,580. (Link: Asustor Nimbustor 2 Gen2 AS5402T 2 Bay NAS – PCWORX)
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
