INTRODUCTION

   As NAS servers become more popular just like with any other segment of the industry competition between manufacturers grows even stronger and that means they are presented with two valid choices/options either design, manufacture and roll out brand new models or save both money and time by upgrading existing ones with the latest hardware components. This of course is nothing new since we've seen it countless times over the years in most areas of the industry from electronics like TV screens, speaker systems and PC related products up to even cars so it's really nothing we can or should complain about. ASUSTOR released the AS1004T NAS back in late 2016 and after a somewhat successful run they decided to give it a boost by upgrading its hardware components and releasing it once again as the AS1004T V2 model which has been with us for roughly two weeks.

   Founded in 2011, ASUSTOR Inc. was established via direct investment from ASUSTeK Computer Inc. The ASUSTOR brand name was created as a portmanteau of “ASUS” and “Storage”. ASUSTOR is a leading innovator and provider of private cloud storage (network attached storage) and video surveillance (network video recorder) solutions, also specializing in the development and integration of related firmware, hardware and applications. We are devoted to providing the world with unparalleled user experiences and the most complete set of network storage solutions possible.

   The first AS1004T NAS was aimed towards home users on a tight budget and although its Marvell Armada 385 1GHz dual-core SoC (system-on-chip) with its 512MB DDR3 SDRAM (not expandable) and 16MB flash module were plenty for that kind of use after 2 years ASUSTOR needed to keep up with the competition. Strangely enough however ASUSTOR didn't go to great lengths in order to upgrade the AS1004T and so the sole difference with the brand new AS1004T V2 (or at least the most visible one) is the higher clock of the Armada 385 dual-core SoC which is now set at 1.6GHz (still a 60% speed increase should yield some interesting results). Other than that pretty much everything else remains the same so the AS1004T V2 is equipped with 4 SATA III bays (can be configured in JBOD and RAID 0/1/5/6/10), 512MB DDR3 SDRAM (not expandable), 2 USB 3.0 ports and a single RJ45 Gigabit port. So let's move forward with our review and find out exactly what kind of performance bump one can expect from the AS1004T V2 (always compared to the original AS1004T).