A Closer Look:

The outside of the N299 stands out with very nice aesthetics, simple colors and the layout give a very good impression of quality. The LED lighting might be a touch too bright, but I think I complain about that for pretty well everything these days, so I might as well just drop it...

Cables

The front

Rear ports

The rear ports are simple, 2 USB ports, 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports and the power connector. There is also a security lock that I think is a good idea for a small business or someone with too many roommates to keep track of. On the front there are just 2 buttons and a 3rd USB port to worry about. The power button is a little stiff, I usually end up pushing the unit back every time I turn it on and off.

Vertical

sorta upside down

The cage

Accessing the drive bay is done by removing two screws at the back of the unit and sliding the plastic case off. This reveals a metal cage with a motherboard underneath. The cage is attached via two more screws, that also secure the motherboard to the case. This brings up one of my complaints with the N299. When the screws holding the cage are removed, there is still a small slot that carries the data from the 2 hard drives to the motherboard. This slot isn't very tight, but it has enough friction that when I pulled the cage up, the whole motherboard started to come up with it, instead of disconnecting. The motherboard remains attached (sort of) because of the USB ports at the back, and I was really worried about damaging something. There are also a lot of exposed capacitors, and slipping with the screwdriver when either removing or securing the cage could easily damage them.

Motherboard

Cage removed

Hdd slot

Once the cage is removed, it's obvious that it makes up the heaviest portion of the unit, and it does have a few sharp edges. Sliding and securing the hard drives isn't as slick as it was with the N5200, but you probably won't have to do it very often, and it does the job just fine. It might also be an idea for Thecus to include some thumbscrews and make this a tool-less install.

Setup and Software:

The N299 uses the same setup software as the N5200 (and I would assume most of their other products). The wizard finds the N299 over your network via it's Mac address, which means that it doesn't need an IP address. The only thing you have to worry about is that both the setup system you use and the N299, must be on the same router. Setup takes about 30 seconds if you've already done it once before, as it just asks for DHCP information, and sets a new Administration password.

MAC discovery

DHCP

Raid Setup

Going to the N299's built in web configuration page  takes you to a very sparse looking page with 4 unnamed icons. I don't care for this main page, as there is no information about what something does until you hover the mouse overtop of the icons. And while I have been unable to get a screenshot of the problem, most of the time, one or more of the icons doesn't even load until you refresh the page, or attempt to do something else (Tested under OSX with Opera/Firefox and Safari, as well as Opera and Firefox in Windows). Overall it leaves an impression of very poor quality configuration pages.

But as soon as you get past the homepage, there is a very robust and complete management system behind the scene. All of the pages are different from the N5200's, and while they are very fast and easy to use, I think it might be an idea to give them a more uniform feel across the various platforms.

Home page

System info

Video security

During my testing, I found that the Bit-torrent downloading feature failed to function after the first download. Searches revealed that it is a very common problem, but Thecus support has sent me confirmation that the new firmware fixes the problem. Every other feature that I was able to test, worked as advertised.

Assuming that the update will fix it, the automatic downloader is a feature that is now being added to almost every new NAS I've been able to find. The settings for downloads are fairly simple, but more robust than I was expecting. The obvious speed limiting settings are there, but there is also the ability to decide how long you want to keep sharing a file after it has completed downloading, as well you can chose a minimum and maximum number of peers to download from.

CPU usage

Disk info

Raid Choice

The Web Photo album, it is a little awkward. Creating and viewing albums is fine, but I question why they decided to limit the number of photo's you can upload at a time to 8. As for the other major features, well I don't have any cameras compatible with the security software, and I also don't have a USB printer for the print server.

The instructions that come with the N299 in paper form are very sparse, however, the software documentation is excellent, and goes through everything you would need to do. The unofficial forums that deal with the N299 are not as popular as the N5200 series, but still cover basic troubleshooting and some custom modifications.

Firmware warning

Updating

Rebooting

One thing with the setup experience. I don't know if newer units will do this after new firmware is released, but when I went to setup the N299, it informed me that I had to update the firmware before I continued. I really appreciate the warning, I would hate to take all the time to setup a RAID array and potentially lose data to a bug.

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