Review on 🖥️ Asustor AS5202T - High Performance 2 Bay NAS with 2.5GbE Ports, 2GB DDR4 RAM, Gaming NAS for Personal Cloud (Diskless) by Brian Rivenbark

First of all, I love ASUS/ASUStor hardware. I have several tablets, 3 routers, a monitor, an AS1002T NAS and an AS6004T NAS expander. Great hardware with high specs, but don't look for detailed documentation or, god forbid, post-purchase tech support, especially from ASUStor. ASUStor's only technical support option is email. Typically, a technician will send an email after about a day. Then do not hold your breath to take further action. The documentation, including ASUStor College, is a complete joke. It simply describes how to do things in a closed, perfect world. Also the FAQ and ASUStor forum are totally useless. I currently have an AS1002T NAS with an AS6004T expander. I ran into problems trying to install a 3rd HD in an expansion. It was on ASUStor's approved list and exactly the same model as the other 2. A few days without hearing from them, I accidentally stumbled upon a clumsy solution. I have informed ASUStor but said I see this as a temporary fix but I would like it resolved. NO, it was that tech who must have decided that an email or two would suffice and that was it. Okay, let's move on to the AS5202T. Bought as a replacement for AS1002T. Before opening it, I went through all of ASUStor's documentation and videos on migrating a NAS system. Everything was so easy. Swap drives, boot the new NAS and you're good to go! However, in the real world, after I swapped drives and booted into the AS5202T, instead of showing the old drives, the NAS wanted to reinitialize and erase both drives. Not good and not what should happen. I contacted back and forth several times but nothing worked so tech support. Had posted a technical ticket describing the problem and got a response the next day asking for some technical details. Sent information and NOTHING. It's been 4 days and I'm back to using the old NAS and have an expensive new paperweight on my desk. I have a new ASUS Zenwifi mesh router. Fingers crossed. After that there will probably be no more ASUS/ASUStor products. **Update May 3rd Two weeks have passed and nothing from Asustor. There is no message from their non-technical support. Looks like I'll survive Revain's return period just in case and then return it. I mentioned in the original review that I was waiting for the ASUS Zenwifi xt8, got it early and it was easy to install. Absolutely no problem with that. By the way, unlike ASUStor, ASUS has a real phone number for technical support. **Updated May 7th. With less than a week left until returning to Revain, I decided to continue troubleshooting. It took a while but I found the cause of the problem. This was entirely due to the ASUStor hardware, so it should have been very easy for them to fix the problem. NO, not ASUStor. Damn the customer and full steam ahead. However, I ran both the AS5002 and the extender and all drives work. I have to say that the hardware works great. I am using a media storage NAS for my Plex Media Server. Everything works great and is faster than the old NAS AS1002. I even installed the Plex app on the 5202 and everything worked fine. It even did limited transcoding, which is CPU intensive. I even have the LAG (Link Aggregation Group) function running. So it looks like I'm running without any HELP OR SUPPORT FROM ASUSTOR. Without bias I would give the hardware 5 stars, but the support would get 0 if possible. The rating stays at 1 star.