A high-capacity Nas with built-in wireless and Gigabit Lan
The Asus Aspire Easystore

Review: Acer Aspire Easystore

A high-capacity Nas with built-in wireless and Gigabit Lan

Written by Will Stapley

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Network-attached storage (Nas) drives aren’t hard to come by these days, but you don’t find many with built-in Wifi.

Acer’s Asipre Easystore will link to your network via wired or wireless connections.

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Although slow wireless speeds usually mean tasks such as copying large files and streaming video are often left to faster wired connections, having wireless on your Nas provides you with a quick and clutter-free way of hooking it up to your network. It’s especially useful if you’re often just streaming audio files, photos and saving documents to your Nas.

Should you require faster speeds, a Gigabit Lan port is also available. Acer’s Aspire Easystore houses four hard drive bays, our review model coming with the maximum total storage of 2TB (four individual Seagate 7,200rpm 500GB disks) – enough to hold even the most extravagant of media collections. And with various Raid options available, you can set up mirroring to safeguard data.

The web-based interface gives you control over functions such as Raid configuration, media sharing (including UPnP), wireless networks etc. It will also attempt to rectify any problems with the drives. With all four drives whirring away simultaneously, a fair amount of heat is generated.

Acer has dealt with this well, though, and a large yet quiet fan keeps things cool; you’ll hear it droning away in a very quiet room, but it won’t be heard if you’re watching TV. There are plenty of cheaper Nas drives available, including smaller versions of the Easystore – more suitable to the average home user.

Advanced features, such as being able to schedule Bit Torrent downloads (as with the Qnap TS-209 Pro), are also missing, but the Easystore is otherwise well-designed and easy to use.

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Product overview

  • Price: £499
  • Manufacturer: Acer
  • Specifications: 2TB storage (four 500GB disks)

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Ratings

  • Overall rating: 4
  • Features: 3
  • Performance rating: 3
  • Value for money: n/a
  • Average user rating:
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Verdict

Pros Wireless and wired interface; UPnP compatible; heaps of storage
Cons Few users need 2TB; not many advanced features
Overall A well-built Nas with plenty of storage, but it lacks some advanced features found on other Nas devices

See also:

image: Qnap TS-209 Pro

Review: Qnap TS-209 Pro network-attached storage

A feature-rich Nas with Dual Sata drive bays   More...

image: Buffalo Terastation Pro II

Review: Buffalo Terastation Pro II network-attached storage

Even faster shared storage for small business networks   More...

image: Thecus N299

Review: Thecus N299 network-attached storage

A feature-rich Nas device with plenty of storage   More...

image: Acer Altos Easyshare

Review: Acer Altos Easystore network-attached storage

Share files and protect desktop PCs with this impressive device   More...

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