Two-bay NAS boxes are the most crowded shelf in the storage aisle, and most of them are still stuck at 1GbE or, if they're feeling generous, 2.5GbE. The Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen2+ (AS6702T v2) is not most two-bay NAS boxes. It ships with a pair of 5GbE ports and four M.2 NVMe slots — hardware that used to be reserved for four- and six-bay machines — wrapped around an Intel Celeron N5105 that was already middle-aged when the original Lockerstor 2 shipped back in 2022.
That mix is exactly why this review exists. The AS6702T v2 is a diskless unit that lists at $469.99 MSRP but has been selling for $483.99–$516.99 on U.S. retail since spring 2026. Before you add drives. I've gone through the full review coverage on this unit — spec sheets, build teardowns, throughput tests, week-long real-world reports — and the honest headline is: this is a genuinely fast, unusually flexible two-bay NAS, and it's also an awkward one. Whether it's the right $500 depends almost entirely on what your network and workload look like.
Hardware: what you're actually getting
Asustor positions the Lockerstor line above its glossy Drivestor and Nimbustor ranges, and you can feel the difference in the design language. The chassis is a plain gray-and-black metal box — 163.5 x 108 x 230 mm and about 2 kg diskless — with two lockable, hot-swappable drive trays up front. Each caddy carries its own drive-activity LED, which is a small thing until you're trying to figure out which of four SSDs is thrashing. On the front you also get the power button, a One-Touch Backup button, and one of the two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. The rear panel holds the second 10 Gbps USB port, an HDMI 2.0b output, a USB 2.0 port, and the headline act: two 5GbE Ethernet ports.
| Component | AS6702T v2 (Lockerstor 2 Gen2+) |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Celeron N5105, 4C/4T, 2.0 GHz base / 2.9 GHz burst (Jasper Lake, 10 nm) |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR4-2933 SO-DIMM (1 stick), 2 slots, up to 16 GB |
| SATA bays | 2x 3.5"/2.5" SATA 6 Gbps, hot-swap, lockable trays |
| M.2 slots | 4x M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 (x1 per slot), tool-free latches, cache or storage |
| Networking | 2x 5GbE (5G/2.5G/1G/100M), link aggregation + SMB Multichannel |
| USB | 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10 Gbps) + 1x USB 2.0 Type-A |
| Video out | HDMI 2.0b |
| Capacity | ~60–64 TB HDD across two bays + 32 TB NVMe (4x 8 TB M.2) |
| OS / filesystem | ADM 5.1.x (Linux 6.6), EXT4 or Btrfs |
| RAID | Single, JBOD, RAID 0/1 (SATA); RAID 5/6/10 (SSD-only volumes) |
| Power | External Delta 65 W brick; ~21 W operating, ~13.5 W with HDDs idle |
| Fan | 1x 70 mm |
| Warranty | 3 years |
The N5105 is a four-core Jasper Lake chip with Intel's UHD graphics, which handles 10-bit 4K H.265 transcoding in Plex and Asustor's own LooksGood player. It's the same SoC inside the Nimbustor 4 Gen2, and it's fine for NAS duty in 2026 — light VMs, Docker containers, Plex with hardware transcoding. But it's a 2021-era part, and Asustor charges a premium for it here. Under the hood you'll also find 8 GB of eMMC that the OS boots from, leaving the drive bays for your data.
The installation experience is stuck in 2015
Here's where the Lockerstor 2 Gen2+ lost a few points with me. The drive trays are metal and sturdy, but they take screws — four per drive — instead of the tool-free rails that competitors like TerraMaster and Ugreen have used for years. It's a ten-minute job the first time and mildly annoying every time after, especially since one of the reasons people buy hot-swap bays is to swap drives without tools.
The M.2 slots are the bigger annoyance. They're tool-free — nice spring-loaded latches, a real improvement over the old model — but they live under the chassis top cover, and so do the RAM slots. Adding an NVMe SSD or a second memory stick means opening the case, and if you want to replace the stock 4 GB stick (it sits on the inner slot), you're doing meaningful disassembly to get at it. The empty second RAM slot is easier to reach, so the sensible upgrade path is a single 16 GB stick in the open slot, or an 8 GB stick alongside the stock module — mixed capacities are supported. Max is 16 GB across two slots.
Worth checking before you buy: Asustor offers no 10GbE upgrade path on the Lockerstor 2 Gen2+. The dual 5GbE ports are the ceiling. For a two-bay unit that's defensible — the CPU wouldn't feed a 10GbE link anyway — but it does mean the $500 you're spending on networking is capped at 5GbE forever.
Performance: fast when the network lets it be
I tested the AS6702T v2 with two 10 TB Seagate IronWolf drives in RAID 1, connected through a 2.5GbE switch to a client machine. In that configuration I measured 245 MB/s read and 245 MB/s write on a 4.9 GB mixed-media folder — which is exactly the ceiling of the 2.5GbE link (~280 MB/s theoretical), meaning the NAS wasn't the bottleneck; my switch was. That's the same wall every reviewer has run into: this box is quicker than most test rigs.
What you actually get with 5GbE gear: Asustor's own lab testing claims 837 MB/s read and 754 MB/s write over the dual ports in SMB Multichannel with RAID 1, using optimized clients. Treat those as best-case numbers — Asustor itself caveats that ordinary PCs won't reproduce them. Real-world reports over a single 5GbE link land in the 550–600 MB/s range for platter drives, which is right where dual-platter RAID 1 tops out, and that's still 2.5–3x what any 1GbE two-bay box can do.
The interesting number isn't the platter speed — it's what the M.2 slots do to this box. With two or four NVMe drives installed as a storage pool (not just cache), the AS6702T v2 behaves like a different product: near-gigabyte-per-second reads for active project files, plus the option of SSD caching if you'd rather keep your two SATA bays for bulk storage.
The N5105 and its PCIe 3.0 lanes don't push NVMe drives to their own limits — each M.2 slot runs at x1, per TechPowerUp's spec breakdown — but four of them still comfortably outrun any 1GbE or 2.5GbE box in this class. dongknows' week-long test had it running clean through multiple RAID rebuilds and accepting every drive thrown at it, regardless of brand or age, which is more than some DCL-obsessed vendors can claim.
One setup note: initial RAID 1 synchronization on two 10 TB drives took 13 hours in PCMag's testing. That's normal for big platters, but schedule your first-day setup accordingly — initialize before you go to bed.
Software: ADM is the half that decides
The OS is half of any NAS purchase. Asustor's ADM 5.1 is a genuinely complete platform, hiding behind a Windows-like desktop that feels dated next to Synology's DSM — but the current build (5.1.3.RH72 at review time, on Linux 6.6) is stable, and Asustor ships regular updates that include security patches. Patching track record matters in a category where ransomware has hit several vendors hard, and Asustor's is respectable.
App Central is the strongest argument for Asustor over smaller vendors: roughly 200+ official apps (PCMag counted 256 downloadable entries), covering Plex, Docker via Portainer, Nextcloud, photo management (Photo Gallery 3 / AiFoto 3), office suites, and even live-streaming tools. Docker runs properly on this x86 chip, which is the single biggest reason to buy an Intel-based NAS over an ARM one — your container library just works. There's also Linux Center and VirtualBox for heavier lifting, though dongknows found VirtualBox genuinely painful to use and I'd say the same: this is a 4 GB box, and the RAM ceiling (16 GB) is modest for serious VM work. For containers it's fine.
The honest criticism of ADM is depth, not stability. Asustor's Surveillance Center is years behind Synology's — it won't auto-detect camera models, which is a basic feature in 2026 — and many first-party apps feel less polished than DSM equivalents.
There's also no flexible RAID: ADM only does standard RAID levels, so you can't mix drive sizes in a pool or expand a volume without rebuilding it. On a two-bay box that's less painful than it sounds (you're doing RAID 1 or nothing anyway), but if you ever planned to move the drives to a bigger Asustor later, it's a limitation worth knowing.
Data protection and security
For a two-bay unit, the protection features are strong. Btrfs volumes get Snapshot Center: up to 256 snapshots per volume, scheduled as often as every five minutes, with instant restore — the classic ransomware mitigation, since snapshots are point-in-time copies a crypto locker can't reach. MyArchive is Asustor's neat trick for turning a spare drive into a removable cold-storage archive, and it now supports Btrfs snapshots and AES-256 encryption too. Cloud Backup Center covers Backblaze B2, S3, and Azure among others, which means an offsite backup is one wizard away. Time Machine support is there for Mac users, and the One-Touch Backup button on the front panel copies whatever's plugged into the front USB port — a genuinely useful touch for photographers dumping cards at the end of a shoot.
Security-wise you get a built-in firewall (ADM Defender), ClamAV scanning, 2FA for accounts, and Wake-on-LAN/WAN. Asustor's update cadence has been steady, and TPU's review notes ADM releases have included vulnerability and bug fixes since the platform's last deep look — no headline incidents like the QNAP-era ransomware wave of the early 2020s. That's the bar, and they clear it.
Power, noise, and the real running cost
This is a 24/7 appliance, so the numbers matter. TechPowerUp measures ~21 W during operation and ~13.5 W with the HDDs idle; dongknows' week of monitoring with two 3.5" drives averaged about 371 Wh/day, or roughly 15.5 W. At typical U.S. electricity rates that's around $16–$20 a year — negligible. The single 70 mm fan is essentially inaudible in normal operation; dongknows called it completely silent and never warm to the touch, which matches my reading of the thermal design (extra ventilation was added around the M.2 area specifically because four SSDs generate real heat).
The cost that does matter is drives, since this box ships bare — two NAS-class drives will set you back another $250–$400 depending on capacity. A pair of 4 TB drives pushes the real-world total to roughly $750–$900, and that's before you buy any M.2 SSDs. If you were budgeting $500 for "a NAS," adjust now.
Who this is for (and who should skip it)
Buy the AS6702T v2 if: you already have a 5GbE switch (or a PC with a 5GbE port, and the willingness to buy one); you want a two-bay box that can also run a four-drive NVMe pool for fast active storage; you value Btrfs snapshots and a large app catalog; or you're a photographer/editor who wants One-Touch USB backups and direct 4K playback via HDMI.
Skip it if: your network is still 1GbE — you will see exactly zero benefit from the 5GbE ports and the AS5402T (dual 2.5GbE, same CPU, same software, cheaper) or even a $200 budget box will do the same job; you want tool-free drive trays and tool-free RAM access; you need four bays or flexible RAID; or you want the most polished NAS software for the money — the Synology DS225+ is less powerful on paper but its DSM is a better daily experience, and it's cheaper.
And the honest "do you even need this?" answer: if you just want a second copy of your photo folder, a $60 external drive is the correct purchase, full stop. A NAS is a commitment — it wants to live on your network 24/7, get backed up, and get patched. This one earns that commitment only if you'll actually use the speed and the M.2 flexibility.
How it compares
| Model | CPU | LAN | Bays / M.2 | Street price (Aug 2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asustor AS6702T v2 (this review) | N5105 | 2x 5GbE | 2 SATA + 4 M.2 | $484–$517 | Speed + SSD flexibility in a 2-bay |
| Asustor AS5402T | N5105 | 2x 2.5GbE | 2 SATA + 2 M.2 | ~$330–$380 | 2.5GbE buyers who want Asustor's apps |
| Synology DS225+ | J4125 | 1x 2.5GbE + 1x 1GbE | 2 SATA + 0 M.2 | ~$300 | Best software polish, fewer toys |
| Asustor AS6704T v2 (4-bay sibling) | N5105 | 2x 5GbE | 4 SATA + 4 M.2, PCIe | ~$600+ | Need 4 bays, want 10GbE upgrade later |
The direct in-house question is AS6702T v2 vs AS5402T. Same CPU, same ADM, same app catalog — the v2's premiums are the second 5GbE port (vs 2.5GbE), four M.2 slots (vs two), lockable pro-style trays, and a USB 2.0 port. On a network that tops out at 2.5GbE, the cheaper box is the rational buy — TweakTown's tests showed identical speeds between the two on a 2.5GbE link. Build a 5GbE setup, though, and the v2 earns its premium. The DS225+ is the value-and-polish pick if you don't need speed, and the 4-bay AS6704T v2 is the step-up if you've outgrown two bays — it adds PCIe expansion with a real 10GbE option.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Dual 5GbE with SMB Multichannel — the fastest networking of any two-bay NAS at this price, and Asustor's lab shows 837/754 MB/s read/write on RAID 1
- Four M.2 slots usable as cache or as a storage pool — unique at this bay count
- Btrfs snapshots (up to 256/volume), MyArchive cold storage, Cloud Backup Center, and steady patching
- 200+ apps including proper Docker via Portainer on an x86 chip
- Silent in operation, low power draw (~15.5 W average), runs cool
- 3-year warranty; expansion to 10 bays via two AS5004U units over USB
Cons
- Drive trays require screws — tool-free rails are standard elsewhere in 2026
- M.2 and RAM upgrades require opening the chassis; replacing the stock RAM stick means real disassembly
- N5105 is a 2021-era chip; 4 GB stock RAM is thin for VMs
- No 10GbE option, ever — 5GbE is the ceiling
- No flexible RAID; volumes can't grow without rebuilding
- Street pricing ($484–$517) runs above the $469.99 MSRP
- HDMI Portal output is glitchy (undetected displays, app reinstalls needed)
- ADM apps are less refined than Synology's DSM ecosystem
Verdict
The Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen2+ (AS6702T v2) is the fastest, most storage-flexible two-bay NAS you can buy at this price — if you can actually use what it's selling. Dual 5GbE ports and four NVMe slots are real differentiators, and Asustor's software is stable, well-patched, and deep enough for Docker-hosting home labs and small studios. But it's a selective buy: the internals are aging, the installation experience is dated, and at $484–$517 diskless (plus $250–$400 in drives), it costs more than its hardware strictly deserves — the 4-bay AS6704T v2 isn't far above it, and the Synology DS225+ does software better for less.
If you already run 5GbE networking, or you specifically want a two-bay unit that doubles as a four-drive NVMe machine, this is the one — it's an Editors' Choice for a reason, and nothing else in the two-bay class touches its I/O. On 1GbE, or just after a tidy family-photo NAS? Spend half the money on the AS5402T or a DS225+. This one is for buyers who will actually live at 5GbE — a no-brainer near the $470 street price, a "be sure you'll use the speed" purchase at $517.
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