Thecus N7510 7-Bay NAS Review
Chris Hadley / 12 years ago
The N7510 is a product that Thecus brought in not only to offer a mid-way solution for users stuck between a six or eight bay solution, but is also there to offer that flexibility at a highly affordable price in respect whilst not loosing the edge on its performance. Keeping on the topic of performance for just now, it has to be said that the N7510 is very consistent, in fact one of the most consistent that I think I have seen to date and in a large number of the tests, the variance in performance was not that much, not saying it was down on performance, when it shouldn’t have been, more that it performed better under certain RAID conditions when normally I would see a clear difference in performance.
When buying a NAS, there are typically two or three RAID levels that I would see used including RAID0 and RAID1, but most of the time, RAID5 is the array of choice. This is purely down to its balance between capacity and redundancy and this balance is a big selling point for a most users after all the more drive you put into an array, the greater the possibility of a drive failing and breaking the data set.
Going back to the price point, I was expecting to see this unit come in with a higher price point and to be honest I’m very surprised to see it so affordable for what is on offer. Normally when you see a cheaper solution, there will be a short fall on performance or features, but that is not the case here, Thecus have got all of the usual features that we would expect, plus a good level of performance for under £600. The only thing that I can identify that this unit does fall on the lack of compatibility with 10GBe cards, but realistically, if you’re moving into that market then price is not a much of an issue and there is the N7700Pro V2 which does support 10GBe connectivity instead.
I don’t think I’ve ever given a NAS a bang-for-buck award, but Thecus can put yet another first on their list now as I can’t think of a reason why this is not a highly affordable system given everything that is on offer.
