ASUSTOR AS3204T Four-Bay Consumer NAS Review

Introduction

Near the end of our testing on the Thecus N2810, ASUSTOR contacted me, because they too had a new NAS they were excited about. This new platform dubbed the 32 series, takes advantage of the Intel Braswell platform just as the N2810 from Thecus and TS-253A from QNAP do. The largest difference here is the number of bays, with the previous having two bays and the AS3204T that sits on my table includes four.

Going into further detail, the AS3204T is a consumer-focused appliance aimed to be a multimedia powerhouse with Kodi and Plex support. At the heart, ASUSTOR claims 4K support out of the box along with 7.1 HD audio. Adding to this, ASUSTOR has added the necessary controls to allow AES 256-bit hardware encryption to secure your data, preventing your data from entering the wrong hands in the event of loss or theft.

The hard specifications of this platform show it using an Intel Celeron quad-core CPU operating at 1.6GHz, the same N3150 we spoke about in the Thecus review. ASUSTOR has cut some corners with the memory on this unit being non-upgradable and soldered directly onto the motherboard, with a capacity of 2GB.

You get three USB 3.0 ports, a single Gigabit Ethernet, along with an HDMI 1.4b port for connecting directly to your television. Power consumption is said to hover around 16 watts, depending on the drives used.

MSRP of the four bay ASUSTOR AS3204T lands at $399.99 with a three-year warranty.