The 5N2 is the successor of the 5N, which we've already reviewed last year. On the inside there is now an upgraded quad core SoC running at 1.6GHz (1.2GHz with the 5N) making sure there is enough processing power and apart from that there are two 1 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces (1 interface in the 5N) for quick transfers. Drobo is keen on making their NAS as easy to use as possible. One key feature is the possibility to add disk drives of different sizes to an array.


Back last year we've had the predecessor of the Drobo 5N2 for review, which went by the name 5N. Meanwhile it's about time to have a look at the successor and check what the NAS manufacturer has changed and what remained the same. At a first glance it looks like not was touched but still on the performance side there was an upgrade with a new and more powerful processor and a second Gigabit Ethernet interface has been added as well, bringing fail-over redundancy or higher network performance to the table. Apart from that the 5N2 from Drobo is a NAS that has been optimized towards eas of use - like the predecessor. Therefore you get a sleek looking product offering basic features from the hardware perspective. Apart from that there is Drobo's so called BeyondRAID feature as well as an mSATA connector and we're certainly going to have a closer look those goodies. Apparently we wil also have a look at performance, which used to be the achilles heel of Drobo's consumer offerings in the past.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 5 - Software
Page 2 - Preview	Page 6 - Test Setup
Page 3 - Specifications	Page 7 - Test Results
Page 4 - Delivery	Page 8 - Conclusion