CONCLUSION

   Thecus has been around for almost 10 years now but until the moment we got their N5550 in our hands we didn't think they could come close to QNAP, Synology and ASUSTOR both in terms of performance and operating system usability always based on what we had seen until then. The N5550 changed that not only because it managed to come real close to some of the leading NAS Servers in terms of read/write speeds (let's not forget that it's a model that already counts over 14 months in the market) but also because it offers 5 drive bays at the same price others offer 4. Unfortunately the operating system is still a bit rough around the edges especially since it's quite hard to install some of the modules/applications (like the localdisplay) and it's not as rich in graphics like the ones from QNAP, Synology and ASUSTOR but Thecus is aware of those issues so we might see some improvements in the near future.

   We already mentioned the N5550 NAS Server offers 5 drive bays for the price of 4 and that's because it will currently set you back a total of USD447.33 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 429.17Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) a price tag which puts it right next to other the less powerful solutions like the TurboNAS TS-421 NAS Server by QNAP and the DiskStation DS414 by Synology (Marvell based solutions). Overall if we excuse the lack of more USB 3.0 ports and the SATA II connectivity (affects only single SSD configurations) the N5550 offers the best price/performance ratio for a 4/5 bay NAS Server in the market as we speak and that alone is enough for us to award it with our Golden Award.

PROS

- Good Build Quality (Leaving Out The Front Door)
- Very Good Read/Write Performance
- 5 Drive Bays
- 2GB DDR3 RAM (Expandable To 8GB By Patching The FW)
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports (With Link Aggregation)
- 5 USB Ports (1xUSB 3.0 / 4xUSB 2.0)
- eSATA Ports
- HDMI/VGA Outputs
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10/JOBD/Hot Spare/Hot-Swap
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Power Consumption
- SATA II
- Single USB 3.0 Port