A couple of weeks ago I’ve bought a Network Attached Storage (Edimax NS-2502) with 2 additional HDDs (WD10EAVS). The complete tech specs for the NAS can be found at http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=272&pl1_id=18&pl2_id=75, so I’m going to jump straight to the review.

First of all, the price is quite small compared to similar solutions from D-Link. Unfortunately so is the quality of the product.

Hardware-wise it is pretty OK. It doesn’t have any special design (like LaCie). Also, there are no screws for opening the case. The bad part is the loud fan situated underneath the unit that doesn’t have a variable speed. If you are planning on keeping it in the bedroom think again. Also, the front LEDs are pretty bright.

package

front view

rear view

bottom view

HDD2 slot open

one of the 2 HDDs

Web management

Here comes the bad part. The web UI works fine until you start using the torrent download. This made all the pages load very slow. For some unknown reason the torrents were also extremely slow. The speed of any torrent would not exceed 50KB/s at all and of the time the torrents would simply refuse to start. This was happening on the same router where a standard PC would reach speeds up to 1MB/s.

web interface

torrent management

crappy English

The file and FTP server both worked fine. I didn’t experience any problems even when the torrents were active.

Solving the torrent issue

I found the solution on a thread from the official Edimax forums. You basically have to upgrade the firmware with one from a different product.

I’m going to explain the steps I took to upgrade the firmware. Please back up any important data you might have stored in the NS unit. Also note that should you do this upgrade, you are doing it at your own risk.

1. I downloaded the firmware version 1.3.6tw from http://www.planex.net/download/nas/mzk-nas02sg.htm.
2. After extracting the archive there were 2 important files there: images_1.3.6TW.bin and btmodule.bin.
3. I used the first one to upgrade the firmware. After doing this I was unable to access the Web UI (the default IP had changed). However it wasn’t the 192.168.2.5 from the original factory settings, it was now changed to 192.168.1.100 (there is a short setup guide for the Planex product where this is mentioned). For some reason none of these IPs worked until I pressed both the release and copy buttons for 5 seconds (this is to reset the unit to factory defaults). Now the new firmware had default settings and I was able to access the Web UI at 192.168.1.100.
   

   new web interface

4. I had a RAID1 configuration before the upgrade so I went to the Tools panel and rebuilt it without any problems. All the data from the HDDs remained intact.
5. In the BitTorrent panel you have to upload the second file, btmodule.bin. Now only specify a default download directory and everything is set. There is a button there that will launch a separate window to manage your torrents. It looks good, it’s updated via AJAX and works well.
   

   the new BitTorrent client

6. There is a new Print Server panel present but I don’t know if it actually works. Also note that the LEDs will be mixed up with this new firmware because the product it was intended for has a different LED layout. Don’t rely on what they display now.

One more thing: I had problems with the internet connection on the unit (both on the original and new firmware and both web download and torrent download) when the IP was not set to be obtained automatically.

I have not tested any of the following, either because I don’t care or don’t need them:

• iTunes server
• media server
• print server (found on the new firmware)
• connecting external HDDs or Flash Sticks via the 2 USB ports

Conclusion

A cheap product. I haven’t seen a worse interface on any other piece of hardware I had. However, with this new firmware I hope it will be more stable in which case the investment was worth it.

This was my first experience with a product from Edimax and it was a bad one. They created a really bad web interface with lots of bugs. I don’t think I’ll ever buy anything from them ever again, even if it means paying an extra buck.

Other useful links

I really did a lot of searching for other reviews but apart from this post I couldn’t find much information. And yes, I don’t consider articles with some dumb picture from Edimax and a couple of sentences with the specs useful. I can read the manual myself.

Then the bad stuff began:

• some pages looked weird. Probably Webkit doesn’t read a particular CSS correctly. But bothoth IE and FF do.
• a minor bug with the refresh. It only happened on a particular page (http://www.loose.utt.ro/~oose/). Basically you have to hit F5 2 times to reload the page. Tested on 2 Chromes, each on a separate machine.
• pages loading slowly. Again, I only compared it with FireFox which didn’t had this problem.

And it looks like surfing incognito doesn’t work so well on Facebook or Googel docs!

Let’s keep it short and structured:

Configuration

• Intel Core 2 Duo T9300
• HDD 250 GB
• 3 GB RAM
• nVIDIA 8400 GS
• 13″ LED display
• fingerprint reader
• 0.3 Mp web cam
• Windows Vista Business OEM
• wireless G (nope, my model does not have N)
• DVD-RW slot-load
• Bluetooth

The GOOD

• great design
• light
• small
• LED display means a brighter screen and a lower power consumption (at least they brag about it)
• about 3 hrs battery time (normal usage)
• remote control which fits in the express card slot. Very useful for presentations or movie playback.
• HDMI output

The BAD

• capacitive media buttons. I guess they were introduced just to be cool. Other than that they have no practical use. If you are using the laptop in a dark place you cannot feel them and end up pressing a couple before reaching the one you want. For some reason, when pressing the eject button the entire OS freezes for 2-3 seconds while the disk is ejected. And yes, the volume controls are capacitive too and do not have direct control on the speaker output. This is quite dumb because there are cases in which you cannot make the laptop shut up: try running Winamp, then lock the system; you won’t be able to turn down the volume or mute the speakers unless you log into Windows again.

The really BAD

• it’s broken. The graphics board decided that about 10 months of use it served enough. Now I get to watch beautiful colorful vertical lines instead of… anything else. Leaving the sarcasm aside, for a laptop that has a 3 year warranty, was used primarily for web surfing and rarely left my desk this doesn’t sound too good. I really had the impression that DELL laptops are reliable. Not any more.

Hopefully I’ll get my graphics board replaced in about a week. If not I may blog about the quality of DELL’s service.