ASUSTOR Nimbustor 4 AS5304T: review and field notes
A four-bay NAS that looks compelling on paper, with two 2.5 GbE ports, RAID 5 and ADM, but whose software and cooling call for a few compromises.
The ASUSTOR Nimbustor 4 AS5304T is a four-bay NAS launched as a fast multimedia machine: two 2.5 GbE ports, an HDMI output, four x86 cores and an ADM system rich in applications. After several days of use, my impression is more nuanced. The hardware remains interesting, but some software and thermal choices have aged badly.
Specifications and a surprise about the processor
- 4 SATA bays for 2.5/3.5-inch drives with hot swap;
- 4 GB of DDR4 installed, two SO-DIMM slots and 8 GB maximum;
- 2 × 2.5 GbE, 3 × USB 3.2 Gen 1 and HDMI 2.0a;
- a 120 mm rear fan, a 90 W power supply;
- no M.2/NVMe slot for a cache or an SSD volume.
The official AS5304T sheet lists an Intel Celeron J4105. The unit tested was nevertheless identified as a J4125 by Geekbench, while ADM simply displayed “Intel Celeron CPU @ 2.00 GHz”. It may be a hardware revision or a quirk of this particular unit: better to check the unit actually delivered than to generalise.
Chassis, connectors and airflow
The glossy magnetic front looks good in photographs, but it holds fingerprints and covers the bays almost entirely. On the left are the power button, the system, network and drive indicators, a programmable button and a USB port. At the back, the large fan stays discreet, alongside two USB ports, the HDMI output and the two red network sockets.
Once the trays are removed, you find the two memory slots and a SATA backplane that occupies a significant part of the internal section. That layout, together with the front cover, probably explains part of the thermal gap observed further down.
ADM day to day
The initial setup happens from the NAS address on port 8000; the default secure port is 8001. ADM is easy to grasp and its desktop is reminiscent of a classic operating system. Some details wear thin quickly, though: limited pagination in several screens, widgets that disappear as soon as you click elsewhere, and settings that are sometimes scattered.
Remote access and security
EZ-Connect plays a role close to QuickConnect: on the local network it can point to the private address of the NAS, while from outside it tries to use the public address and port forwarding. A relay stays available when the direct connection fails, at the cost of generally lower throughput.
ADM also lets you manage certificates, block repeated attempts and filter connections by origin. The screenshot above shows the geographic rule for Belgium. Those protections are useful, but a NAS exposed to the internet always calls for prompt updates, multi-factor authentication and the fewest possible published ports.
Storage and monitoring
The Storage Manager is one of the better screens: volumes, RAID type, drive health and S.M.A.R.T. are easy to find. With three 4 TB drives, the Btrfs RAID 5 volume provides about 7.27 TB usable in the tested configuration.
The Activity Monitor correctly displays CPU, memory, network, drives and processes. What is missing, though, is a genuinely usable view to know immediately which application is generating sustained network transfer. To diagnose saturation, you still have to cross-check several screens or go through the terminal.
Photo Gallery, EZ Sync and backups
Photo Gallery does its job for sorting and browsing a photo library. During the test, however, the mobile application froze several times and occasionally asked for a fresh sign-in. That observation depends on the version used, but it deserves a real test before making it the family’s only photo tool.
EZ Sync was more troublesome: several files of 48 to 148 MB stayed in error, with no genuinely useful explanation. The failure therefore did not only concern one huge file. The screenshot preserves exactly the list observed during the test.
The Backup Center supports SMB, FTP, external media and several remote destinations. It backs up files and folders correctly, but I did not find a native mechanism as complete as a system image able to restore the applications and their whole configuration in one operation. You therefore have to document the installed services separately.
Applications and containers
App Central holds a lot of packages. Some of them actually rely on Docker Engine, with often pleasant integration: Immich, Jellyfin, Portainer, AdGuard Home or Vaultwarden can be deployed without rebuilding the whole stack by hand. I particularly liked the integration of Immich and Vaultwarden with the reverse proxy.
The downside is the absence of a modern native manager to control containers and virtual machines in detail. Portainer partly makes up for that gap, but the product feels less coherent than a platform where containers, logs, volumes and backups are managed in one place.
Throughput and CPU power
The 2.5 GbE link negotiated properly. On the RAID 5 array, ten successive writes of 10 GB files with dd held between 211 and 223 MB/s. The SMB copies observed stayed under 200 MB/s. That result is below the laboratory figures published by ASUSTOR, which use an optimised configuration and link aggregation of both ports: the comparison is therefore not a direct one.
Geekbench 6 measured 392 points single-core and 1,165 points multi-core. That is enough for storage, backups and a few light services, but fairly limited for intensive transcoding, several heavy containers or virtual machines.
Temperatures: the front cover penalises the airflow
After more than two hours of load, the drives rose to 48 °C with the front cover on. Once it was removed, they settled around 44 °C. The processor went from an observed maximum of 85 °C with the cover to about 78 °C without it; the screenshot below shows 80 °C during another sustained measurement.
Verdict
The AS5304T keeps real qualities: four bays, two 2.5 GbE ports, generous connectivity, an approachable ADM and a well-stocked application catalogue. Basic storage, RAID and the usual Docker services work correctly.
But the overall experience is held back by an ageing interface, the errors met with EZ Sync, network monitoring that is too vague, the absence of genuine native management of containers and VMs, limited system backups and a front cover unfavourable to cooling. In 2026 I would only choose it for a large discount or a very specific need. For a new purchase, compare it with more recent models before deciding.
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