Asustor AS 602T Review

The Asustor AS 602T arrives in a plain brown box with a sticker featuring the company name.

The product is well protected between two thick pieces of foam. It is also wrapped inside a clear plastic cover.

As well as the main NAS, there is a peripheral box which contains a power supply (100-240V), regional specific power plug, two LAN cables, a software disc and mounting screws for two hard drives.

The AS 602T is finished in a two tone colour scheme – a bronze metal chassis and plastic front cover featuring the buttons and drive bays. It looks very similar to several QNAP products we have in our offices.

At the side of the chassis are air vents, used to pull in cool air over the components during operation.

The build quality of the unit is exceptionally good, measuring 163.5mm x 108 mm x 230mm (HxWxD). It weighs 2.1 kg.

There is a USB 3.0 port at the bottom. Along the top are several lights which detail activity for network, USB, hard drives and power.

At the back are several Gigabit Ethernet connectors, which support link aggregation and load balancing. There is a single USB 3.0 connector and four USB 2.0 ports as well as a Kensington lock, HDMI output and power connector. A large fan (70mm) is positioned top left and works in an exhaust position, sucking in cool air from the vents at the front of the side panels.

The drive bays are easily removed, by pushing in on the main lever, shown above. These feel really strong and offer tactile feedback thanks to the strong spring positioned behind them.

Each bay is covered with soft felt, to protect against the sensitive drive circuitry underneath. The drives are screwed in from the side. Engineering quality is high, with all the tolerance set perfectly.

With both drives removed, we can see the little SATA daughtercard in all its glory.

Getting a look at the insides isn't difficult, there are simply three screws to remove and the metal chassis can be slid off. The main motherboard is protected underneath a protective cover, so it won't come in direct contact with the metal.

Underneath the cover, is an expansion connector which is in fact an SO-DIMM like you would see in a laptop computer. There is 1GB of DDR3 memory installed on the board, but you can add another 2GB into this slot to cope with more demanding environments. A nice idea.

While it is difficult to see here, the motherboard has an Intel ATOM 2.13 dual core processor onboard.

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