Thecus N4560 4-Bay NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

For a 4-bay system which packs media playback capabilities and all the key hardware features that we would expect to see on any mainstream system from Thecus, the N4560 comes in with a mid-range price point starting at around $380 in the US through Amazon and Newegg and £320 in the UK through Scan and Amazon. Add in the low power consumption figures and we have a system that is not too heavy on the bank to start and not too heavy to power in the long run.

Overview

As the number of NAS options within the SOHO market, as well as the overall NAS market, continues to grow, offering up a system that packs all of the features of a top end system down into a system with a price tag that is comparatively more bite size is a task that every vendor is having to undertake. Fortunately the introduction and implementation of SoCs into NAS products has made a radical change to the market, bringing both the cost of production and the end-user price point far more manageable, whilst continuing to offer good levels of performance that everyone ultimately wants.

Unlike the N2560 and the N2310 that I’ve looked at previously, the N4560 takes a lot of its design inspiration from some of Thecus mainstream systems such as the N5550 (which we’ve also had a look at) with a black metal skinned chassis that gives a sturdy and rugged feel, whilst not straying from some clean design lines. Additionally this unit uses Thecus Intelligent NAS software that I looked a little closer at in my review of the N2310 and once again I feel a little disappointed by it. I totally understand where Thecus are coming from when they say that they want to have a piece of software that interacts with the system, making the user experience less  frustrating, but at the same time I still feel that it needs a lot of work t make it much more user-friendly. Simply put, Thecus need to break completely away from the web-based GUI and have a bit of software which is far more welcoming and easy to work around, including pointers and guides for the novice user. Putting the software to one side and looking at the web-based UI however, things are just like I would expect from Thecus and the number of features that are on offer, including the XMBC media front end, brings everything together in a more than capable package.

Looking at the performance I am once again in a bag of mixed emotions. There are a few occasions where the system delivers the performance figures that I would estimate for the hardware specifications, notably when looking at the RAID0 for maximum performance metrics and RAID5 as my recommended RAID setup, however as we look at the bigger picture it does seem to fall a little short in my testing – even though I have seen elsewhere that faster numbers are obtainable. Due to the fact that I’ve recorded lower than par figures, even though I’ve seen that it can do more, I would make a strong guess that there may be a bug in the firmware where other systems may have been running an earlier revision than what I have here. I have been in contact with Thecus regarding this issue and as and when I am able to remeasure the performance with an earlier firmware revision, I’ll incorporate these findings back into this review.

Taking everything into account and looking at the N4560 as I see it at the moment, everything is there for a top-notch system that delivers the performance, offers the features and crucially comes in at a good price, but I am a little disheartened to say that from my experience with this system, this is not the case just yet. Additionally I will note that I have taken the time to look at the drives in question and test them in another system to double-check that they were not at fault, knowing that this can and has happened whilst I’ve been testing in the past. If the performance figures do come back with a change to the firmware then I may alter my overall thoughts, but until then I’m somewhat reserved.

Pros:

• Full media playback capabilities
• Wide number of add-on features
• Great build quality

Cons:

• Intelligent NAS software still needs some work in my eyes
• Performance is a little mixed for this hardware

“The N4560 has all the right ingredients that it needs for a great performing and well outfitted system for the SOHO market, however with some performance figures that don’t quite do the system the justice it needs, I have to say it has not quite sold itself to me just yet. Should a firmware tweak or two bring back the performance that this system is capable of, then I would be more than pleased.”

Thanks to Thecus for providing us with this review sample.