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Conclusion
The Asustor AS6210T is a remarkable NAS that performs and delivers in many areas. It doesn't dominate any single category, but it does well enough across the board to make it a well-rounded system that is difficult to overlook.
I've said it before, and I continue to preach it; if you are a computer enthusiast, take a lot of photos or have files you never want to lose, you need a NAS. These systems are robust and do more than the category name implies. Properly configured, a system like the Asustor AS6210T will become the center of your digital life. The NAS will link your desktop experience to your mobile experience by giving you access to all of your files at home or while on the go. The user experience improves with each new software add-on release by giving you access to more functions.
Over the last two years, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X have become the buzzwords for home theater enthusiasts. These are two radical shifts in audio technology compared to previous versions. Instead of telling the receiver to play a sound at a certain level from speaker A, B, and C, the latest versions employ positional audio. It requires powerful decoders and playback engines, but that technology is in the receiver. But first, the receiver must receive the signal, and that's been a problem. There are Atmos-enabled Blu-Ray players, but many cost as much as the Asustor AS6210T and you still need a physical disk. Microsoft enabled the feature in the XBox One S, but you still need a disk and a gaming system in the theater room. I'm not trying to invite the kids in my sanctuary of sound isolation -- that defeats the purpose. The AS62 series runs a version of Kodi that supports positional audio, so your home theater could sound even better than the movie theater.
Advanced audio aside, the AS6210T also performs well as a storage device. We would like to see Asustor bring back the advanced cache functions that made these systems outperform most others in the past. Even without the random performance increase, the AS6210T still delivers a very good user experience over iSCSI. Most users will opt for simple SMB data transfers, and SMB 3 support allows this system to satisfy your needs.
Another feature we would like to see on more Asustor products is support for 10-gigabit Ethernet. QNAP and Thecus have offered the feature as an option for several years as an upgrade option by giving users access to PCI Express slots. Most of these systems support Intel's X520 and even older add-in cards that sell for very low prices. To put it into perspective, both QNAP and Thecus now support 40-Gigabit add-in cards from Mellanox, but Asustor has yet to bring 10GbE to systems.
Several companies like to brag about how user-friendly their NAS are. One company comes to mind for the easiest setup and configuration, but the truth is most of these systems are easy to configure for initial use. I prefer to have extra bells and whistles that increase the functionality of the system rather than having limited options for the sake of saying my NAS is the easiest to operate. The AS6210T takes all of five minutes to setup, and three of those are wait time. Once you answer a few questions, the NAS takes care of the rest. At that point, you can log in and choose the features you want, and the options are virtually endless.
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