Thecus N5550 5-Bay NAS Review

Following on from our last Thecus NAS based review, the N4200 Pro which can be found here – Thecus N4200 Pro Review, I’ve been keen to get hold of another one of their products in a similar sector (SOHO and SMB) to see if is a brand wide capability for their products to push the limits of network throughput as we saw with the N4200 Pro. The N5550 that we have here today has one crucial difference over the last two NAS units that we’ve reviewed and this naturally is the number of bays for drives. Having 5 disks installed instead of four, immediately gives good hopes that Thecus can push the limits once more, while keeping costs just below other 6-bay devices.

Typically, NAS boxes come with an even amount of drives available for disks (ie 2, 4, 6, 8+) but as we go up though the sizes, the cost grows quite quickly and so the 5 bay that we have here allows for a balance between cost and size. Does this mean though that there has to be a compromise elsewhere or have Thecus sweetened their product line to cater for the greater market?

We will start by taking a look at the packaging and bundle on offer, before we delve into a closer look at the N5500 itself, inside and out. Afterwards, we can move onto the operating system, to see what functions and features we have available and then we can jump straight into our testing functionality, to see how the NAS performs under Intel NASPT in a variety of configurations.