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Today we are looking at a NAS system from Thecus, the N4200ECO. This product seems to be tagged as a ‘green' solution with the ‘ECO' moniker, although the company certainly haven't skimped on the hardware. The N4200ECO is shipped loaded with a 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 processor with a generous 1GB of DDR3 memory – it can support up to four 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives. Even better – it has seen recent price drops, and is now available for £318 inc vat in a bare bones configuration.
Thecus face stiff competition on the market today. Synology have a plethora of models available, targeting all sectors from a basic home network to a fully fledged performance oriented business audience.
There is no doubt that the N4200ECO is relatively inexpensive. The diskless unit we received for review won't break the bank and there are other options available with hard drives already installed. A 4TB model is available for around £580 inc vat.
The N4200ECO 4 bay can support 3TB drives, for a total of 12TB of storage.
N4200Eco Features:
- Power Meets Affordability
- Next-Generation Performance
- Huge Storage Capacity
- Complete Data Management
- Dual Display Convenience
- Advanced Power Saving Features
- Robust Functionality
The Thecus N4200ECO ships in a large, heavy box with an image of the product on the front. The company also point out some hardware specifications, including the Intel ATOM processor and 1GB of memory.
Inside the N4200ECO is protected between thick foam and an accessory box rests on top of the unit itself.
The bundle includes an internet cable, external power adapter, mounting screws, quick start guide and 3 discs, which include Acronis backup software.
As our review sample came from the factory in the Far East they didn't include a UK power cable. This external power brick is made by Seasonic, a highly respected power supply manufacturer.
The Thecus N4200ECO is very well made and is built around a metal chassis. You can feel the weight immediately after removing it from the box. The front of the unit has a power switch and several USB ports, underneath a colour LED readout. There are various buttons above the four drive bays which allow for direct operation of the unit. There is another readout display above these buttons.
The rear has the power connector port, four more USB ports and two eSATA ports. There are also two GIGABIT LAN connectors and a security port. A large fan takes up around half of the available space.
All panels are metal, and underneath the chassis are four heavy duty feet to maintain stability on a variety of surfaces. Before we install the hard drives, lets take a quick look inside.
When we remove the outer chassis, the motherboard is mounted vertically and protected behind a sheet of black protective material. This is to ensure it won't make contact with the metal outer chassis, causing a short.
The power supply on this device is external and there is an internal extension cable running from the rear of the chassis, next to the exhaust fan, across the top of the chassis, then into the motherboard and front panels.
The power supply also directly feeds the installed drives.
The front door isn't locked with a key, you simply press the panel and it pops open. Each drive bay inside however can be locked in place with the supplied keys.
If each drive bay is unlocked then the lever can be pulled outwards along with the drive. These are sturdy, made from a mixture of tough plastics and metal.
Each drive is mounted into place from underneath. There are markings for 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch drives.
The four drives can then be inserted and locked into place. It is worth pointing out that the engineering standards are really high grade. Each drive slides perfectly into place without any undue pressure required on the tray.
The power supply cable can only connect in one direction as shown above. The cable will be passed horizontally across the fan area. Its not an ideal way to connect the power cable to be honest as extreme pressure on this cable, with additional gravity force could actually bend the pins downwards.
The image above shows the N4200ECO hooked into our network. You will notice the left panel has a readout for the four drives inside. The third light is dull because we actually had a failure on this drive at the start of the review. Underneath these four icons are two LAN lights, one of which is lit.
The top panel details up to the minute information if the N4200ECO is active outside normal duties.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
We have tested many Synology systems in the last year and have become accustomed to the easy installation procedure. The Thecus configuration system caught me off guard.
Firstly, they give the customer three discs. One is labeled ‘Media Server Software' with an ISO burnt onto the disc in data format. This would need to be mounted or either burnt to another disc. We filed this away.
The second disc is a copy of Acronis True Image, Personal 2010 Edition. The third disc is labeled ‘Universal CD A V2.1' which is actually the disc most people would need.
We verified with the ‘Quick Installation Guide' booklet which is less than impressive. There is a single picture of the front of the unit showing the power button and the rear showing the power and LAN connectors. There is no detailed guide on how to fit the hard drives. Sure, its not rocket science, but an inexperienced first time user might find it confusing and intimidating.
This guide also explains that after the N4200ECO boots up, the default IP address for web browser access is 192.168.1.100.
Sadly this wouldn't work on our network as we already know our network is based around 192.168.0.xxx. We therefore reverted to the ‘Universal CD A V2.1 disc' to make any progress.
The first menu highlights all the current NAS systems from the company. The Setup Wizard is the one we want.
The software detected the N4200ECO but it was incorrectly configured outside our network with 192.168.1.100. It would need to be 192.168.0.100 to be accessible via our network browser.
Default login and password are both ‘admin'. You can change the password immediately.
The next stage of the setup is the ‘network configuration'. This is how we can fix the problems. We had to set a fixedIP, so we could just change 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.0.100. That said, I have a switch in the network which uses this IP, so I used 192.168.0.66. The GatewayIP should be the same as our router, so I changed this to 192.168.0.1.
This seems very straightforward now that it is explained in a step by step guide, but an inexperienced user could very well need technical support to get access to the N4200ECO on their network.
Once this is finished, you are able to load the browser page automatically (at the IP previously configured), or to setup another device.
The main browser window gives an overview of the three primary options. ‘Admin', ‘Web Disk', and ‘Photo Server'.
The main interface panel may not be quite as attractively designed as the Synology DiskManager implementation, but it is intuitive enough to navigate.
The Storage panel highlights the four hard drives we have installed. As mentioned earlier, we had a drive failure on the 3rd disk position. Thankfully the N4200ECO has a hot swappable feature, so we didn't need to reboot or power down.
RAID setup is straightforward, toggle the drives you have installed and then the options will open up underneath. Again, while this looks simple enough, many people might miss the ‘description' text underneath the ‘disks list'. With four drives installed, the N4200ECO support JBOD, Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 6 and Raid 10. This is a fantastic level of support which will cater to a wide audience.
The system defaulted to 5% removed from the Raid 1 configuration.
The N4200ECO took around 4 hours to set up our Raid 1 configuration. When compared to Synology that really is painfully slow.
The system panel gives a basic overview of the processor activity although when compared against competing solution from QNAP or Synology it is sadly lacking.
Above is a complete overview of all the main panels on the left of the interface. Overall it is easy enough to use, although we found it quite sluggish and making a change on some panels could take 3-5 seconds.
We are testing the hardware within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance.
We switch the Raid configuration to ’0′ across multiple drives to keep the testing across platforms as closely matched as possible.
Performance results are good, the N4200ECO averaged 93 MB/s read with a particularly strong 81 MB/s write speed.
Next we created a folder of files, 500mb/s in size with a variety of data , from small database documents to larger jpgs and bmps.
When dealing with various file sizes the performance understandably drops, however they are still pretty good, and fast enough for a demanding small office or home server system.
We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
Noise was measured from half a meter away.
The large fan spins extremely slowly, which means that noise emissions are always very low. We recorded around 31 dBa meaning that in the majority of environments this NAS will be basically silent.
We measured power from the socket with 4 x 500 GB Samsung HD502HJ drives installed.
The Thecus N4200ECO consumes a maximum of 41 Watts from the socket when all four drives are actively dealing with data. This is an efficient NAS system, consuming around 14 watts of power when idle (4 drives installed).
The Thecus N4200ECO NAS system is a very high performing NAS system. It blitzed through our data bandwidth tests, peaking around 93 MB/s when dealing with large single files. Not only is it powerful enough to be used in a small office environment, but it can handle reasonably intensive demands before waving the white flag.
The build quality is without reproach, the chassis is crafted almost completely from metal and each of the drive bays are strong enough to withstand long term abuse. The fact these have individual key locks is the icing on the cake. The front fascia has two individual colour panels which report back copious detail on N4200ECO activity, as well as network and drive status.
As we mentioned earlier in the review, we were able to see immediately that one of our 500 GB drives had failed. The fact that the third drive light disappeared was a clear indication that we had to replace the third disk. These are hot swappable, which is a significant bonus.
If data is important then an IT manager should feel happy enough be able to lock the drives away from prying hands. That said, it is clearly not targeting the high end business audience and a more expensive, capable model should be considered for a larger corporate environment.
Sadly there are some rather noticeable problems, which are based around the software and literature supplied with the product. The N4200ECO NAS defaults to a 192.168.1.100 IP and if you happen to have a network based around a 0.xxx IP range then the device is inaccessible until manually intervening with the supplied software.
It was certainly not a complex procedure to rectify this problem, but the multiple optical discs are poorly labelled and the setup software is far from ideal for an inexperienced user. Synology and QNAP are literally light years ahead in regards to software development.
To be fair, once the device is correctly configured for the partnering network, the browser software is straightforward enough to use, although it was rather sluggish. Setting up a 2TB Raid 1 configuration (4x500GB) required a four hour format, which seems positively lethargic. Competing products are significantly faster.
If we can look past the messy configuration then the NAS itself is worthy of commendation. It performs exceptionally well, generates very little noise under load and doesn't demand lot of power from the socket. These three combined are key elements for rating a NAS system in my opinion.
In closing, the Thecus N4200ECO has been a slightly bewildering experience for me. The NAS itself is fantastic and the end user is presented with a capricious expanse of detail from the dual display panels. It seems incredibly well thought out, until the setup and configuration state initiates.
Overall I have no hesitation recommending the Thecus N4200ECO, however I feel it is geared towards slightly more experienced users.
You can buy this direct from ARIA in a bare bones configuration for £318.06 inc vat.
Pros:
- Fantastic performance.
- powerful processor.
- 1GB of memory.
- built like a tank.
- supports up to 12TB of storage.
- lockable.
- external backup options.
- quiet.
- efficient.
Cons:
- The default configuration won't suit some networks.
- Reasonable experience may be needed.
- Software can be sluggish.
Kitguru says: A great NAS system let down by slightly slow running software and a poor initial setup system.
Nice looking nice system. im in the market for one and a four bay unit seems the best value for money. this looks fast and I like the front panels. still swaying towards the synology 211 though.
Jeffrey thats a 2 bay nas? you got the models mixed up?
Never understand why companies don’t spend a little more time and money on the software and user guide. I remember the first time I saw a Synology product and was blown away because the software made sense. Thecus has been around a long time, they should make better interfaces. Also, faster reformatting.