CONCLUSION

   I’d like to start our conclusion by pointing out that the XCubeNAS line by QSAN just won the Good Design Award and at least in that aspect we have to agree since the XN5008T does look a lot better than your average tower NAS (sure design may not matter for most people but if you can also have that why not?). In terms of performance although in 1GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) tests the XCubeNAS XN5008T does well to match the performance of equally strong NAS models by QNAP when we switched to 10GbE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) results were quite impressive and in some tests far above what we’ve seen by the competition (of course the 16GB RAM of our sample certainly helped). Power consumption and noise levels are also pretty much on par with what we’ve seen in the past by similar models but what stands out is build quality and that’s a very important aspect for SMB targeted models. That being said although the XCubeNAS XN5008T offers everything we’d want from a “pure” NAS (network attached storage) the lack of available apps is certainly a deal breaker for many people and although QSAN clearly aims their NAS line towards small and large businesses it’s really a shame to not try and grab a larger market share by working more on the software side (we have forwarded our concerns about that to them and they seem to be positive in expanding their apps to also include features like media sharing/streaming/playback).

   The lack of available apps is not the only drawback of the XCubeNAS XN5008T NAS Server since availability is a huge issue as well. Limited availability globally automatically means higher prices and so currently the “basic” version of the XN5008T (8GB instead of 16GB DDR4 RAM and without the SFP+ 10GbE card) can be found in the USA for USD1999 (Amazon.com) and for 1548Euros inside the EU (SPAN.COM). This means that for you to get the package we tested today you will need to spend roughly USD2400/1900Euros and unfortunately that’s not a price which can be justified for that you’re getting (not with all the competition out there). Prices are certain to drop as QSAN continues to grow their distributor network but at least for now we expect this to be a serious issue (even for businesses). So although we were very happy with the design, build quality, OS stability (and its plethora of settings) and 10GbE performance of the XCubeNAS XN5008T (so much actually that we gave it our Golden Award) unless QSAN resolves both the app and availability/pricing issues we also expect limited interest by consumers (businesses included).

PROS

- Build Quality
- Dual Core Intel Celeron G3930 CPU
- Top of the Charts Performance
- 8GB DDR4 RAM (Expandable To 32GB/16GB In Our Sample)
- 4 RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet Ports (Link Aggregation Supported)
- Gen3x8 PCIe Slot (10/40GbE/Thunderbolt 3.0 Ready)
- 9 Drive Bays (8x3.5”/1x2.5”)
- 5 USB 3.0 Ports
- HDMI Output (Service Menu)
- XReplicator Software
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60/JBOD + Hot Spare Support
- QSM 3.1 OS
- Design (Good Design Award)

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Almost No Available Apps (Both NAS And Mobile)
- Limited Global Availability (Currently)