Physical exam
One of the key physical differences between Thecus' home/small-office products and its small-enterprise products has been the materials from which the casings are made. The more expensive gear has been encased in sturdy, sleek-looking metal, whilst the smaller products have been plastic-clad, trying to hold on to some style, but not always pulling it off. That changes with the N1200...
The front of the N1200 is plastic while the rest of it is a solid sheet-steel. It feels of a much higher quality than, say, the N2100 or N2050. Hopefully future SOHO products from Thecus will follow suit.
The usual array of LEDs and buttons are present. There's power and a USB-backup button, along with indicators for status, power, WAN, LAN, hard disk and USB. At the bottom is a USB port for easy connection and backup of thumb drives or external hard drives.
The device's underside has a 30mm fan with two modes of operation: normal or high. Neither mode is particularly offensive to the ears, but we wonder just how much the fan contributes to the system's cooling. The N1200 also has vents for air convection, plus the metal chassis will help draw heat away from any hot spots, or, more specifically, the hard drive.
The rear of the N1200 features at 4-port 10/100 switch, a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, power input and a reset button, along with a Kensington lock slot and a slot of a WiFi antenna. eSATA and USB interfaces provide means for backing up disks and expanding the capacity of the N1200.
Overall, the N1200 looks good and feels good. It's a good example of a compact and sturdy NAS box that'll fit just about anywhere in the home.
Inside
Two screws keep the casing together. Remove them and slide the lid off and the innards of the N1200 are revealed.
Thecus has crammed a motherboard into the chassis, leaving just enough room for a 3.5" SATA hard drive. It'd be interesting to see what happens to this chassis if left in the presence of a bunch of mini-ITX fanatics.
An Intel IOP processor powers the N1200, so it's not going to be as fast as some of its more expensive x86-based brethren. However, it does have 128MiB of RAM. Due to the size of the motherboard, this RAM isn't upgradeable; it's embedded. There's also a Silicon Image SteelVine 3512 2-port SATA-150 controller and an unknown amount of flash memory (we couldn't read it). The only possible upgrade to this board is the addition of a compatible mini-PCI-based wireless card.
So, upgradeability is sacrificed for size, but luckily Thecus hasn't skimped too much on RAM, so the N1200 should perform OK.
Bundle
In the bundle we were provided with a CAT5e cable along with the necessary screws and plates for installing a hard drive into the unit. There's a warranty card, setup guide and a CD including the setup wizard, which is easy to use and, in the case of the N1200, absolutely necessary (more on that shortly).
The powerbrick is made by Seasonic and a UK plug was provided, but isn't pictured. The bundle is topped off by a rather nice stand for the unit, which has felt around it to prevent scratching both the N1200 and the surface on which it is sat.
The bundle is sufficient and of a good standard; enough to get the N1200 up and running without any fuss.
