On Monday this week we took delivery of the long awaited and most recently talked about Thecus N5200 NAS appliances. Folks from our technical department got their grubby little hands on the N5200 even before the paint could dry! In fact, rumour has it; a unit was discreetly removed whilst the consignment was en-route to our warehouse. So, here in sales we felt a little hard done by, and decided to RAID (no pun intended), the technical department to get our first look at the eagerly awaited Thecus N5200. This is a report from our sales department, and as such, no techno jargon here at all!

The full colour retail box raises the anticipation level and provides a taster of what to expect from an aesthetic aspect. The colours are soothing and not offensive to the eyes. The box has its own carry handle enabling ease for portability. Opening the top flap reveals a power cable neatly tucked in its grove. The unit is held by the two Styrofoam’s top and bottom, a standard affair and is easy to remove. The content includes a quick guide to allow setup with ease, warranty card, product CD, and the Ethernet cable. Once out of the box, the unit is dazzling, if looks could kill...

The N5200 case can only be described as stunning, the glossy blacked Perspex replaces the N4100 Plexiglassfascia, and the famous LED lights are ever present. Construction is solid and as per Thecus standards the hard disk drive cages are of excellent construction and have very little or no play during insertion. The LED panel at the front depicts pertinent information such as IP address (WAN and LAN), RAID status, FAN rpm, and Date and Time, these can be controlled by the four toggle controls just underneath, thereby eliminating the need to access the unit via a PC. Nice touch.

The ventilation for the unit is well thought out, and is provided on both sides of the hard disk cages, which allows more than adequate ventilation for drives. The unit was not even warm to touch, despite having 5x750GB Seagate drives installed. Those of you wondering if the N5200 really does support 5x750GB drives, the response to that is ‘yes’ it most certainly does.

The back of the unit has three screws, which are can be easily removed, to allow access to the unit innards, without any effort. Once, the screws are lose the top cover can be lifted upwards and access to the complete innards can be had. This makes upgrades and replacement of parts easy, with little or no fuss. Serviceability will be a complete dream with this unit mainly as a result of the design consideration Thecus has deployed. To replace the mainboard, PSU, or even install or replace memory, should take no time at all.

The Fan that cools the unit is a DC fan 92x92x25mm with a speed rating of 2000 rpm, and deploys Hypro Bearing technology. Having left it running for 16 hours with 5 x 400GB drives, the outer sides of the unit where the vents are located were not even warm to touch. It seems the N5200 might not suffer from the heat problems other NAS appliances seem to experience.

We are currently measuring performance of the N5200, the results of which will be published shortly.