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QuTScloud is the operating system for QNAP Cloud NAS virtual appliances. With the possibility of on-premises and cloud deployment, QuTScloud enables optimized cloud data usage and flexible resource allocation at a predictable monthly cost.

QES is the operating system for dual-controller QNAP NAS models. With FreeBSD and ZFS, QES is flash-optimized, capable of driving outstanding performance for all-flash storage arrays.

QNE Network is the operating system for QuCPE, QNAP"s universal customer premises equipment series. Run virtual network functions, freely configure software-defined networks, and enjoy benefits such as lowered costs and reduced management efforts.

QNAP Switch System (QSS) is the configuration interface for QNAP"s managed switch series. Enable management functions such as link aggregation, VLAN, and RSTP, to take care of your network topology with ease.

QNAP’s QuRouter OS simplifies managing high-speed and high-coverage LAN/WAN. With NAT, VPN, security, and QuWAN SD-WAN, network management is made easier and remote connections more secure.

QVR Elite is the subscription-based network video recorder software for QNAP"s QTS, QuTS hero, and QNE Network operating systems. Its low monthly fee enables homes and small businesses to build a cost-effective and flexible video surveillance system.

QVR Pro is the network video recorder software for QNAP"s QVR Pro video surveillance appliances. QVR Pro can be also used with a series of apps, such as face recognition and door access control, making it versatile for a range of scenarios.

QNAP smart video solutions provides integrated intelligent packages such as video conferencing and smart retail, boosting productivity for individuals and businesses.

QVR Pro, QNAP’s new surveillance solution, provides 8 embedded monitoring channels, allowing you to quickly build a home surveillance environment hosted on your QNAP NAS without any extra software needed. Businesses can easily expand the number of monitoring channels (up to 128 channels) by purchasing QVR Pro licenses to deploy a large-scale surveillance network.

The QVR Pro Client client software can be installed on Windows® and Mac® devices or in QNAP’s HD Station on NAS, allowing you to monitor from different platforms and flexibly switch from live view or playback mode to take full control over the monitored area. » Get the utility

The QVR Pro Client provides a highly-customizable display panel. You can change each channel’s display ratio, arrange the display, or use the built-in display module to fulfill your surveillance needs.

In the past, surveillance applications were just one of the many applications on NAS. There was no dedicated storage for surveillance recordings and usually the system performance was limited, making it unsuitable to fulfill the requirements of professional surveillance systems. QVR Pro, QNAP’s brand-new surveillance application, introduces the concept of "dedicated storage space" to ensure that the storage is fully reserved for QVR Pro and the system performance will not be impacted by other applications on NAS.

You can easily expand your storage capacity by simply connecting expansion enclosures，to your NAS or by using QNAP’s VJBOD to use the unused storage of another QNAP NAS.

QVR Pro supports over 140 brands and ONVIF cameras. You can also install QNAP’s QUSBCam2 app to turn a budget-friendly USB webcam into a networked camera.

The high scalability of QNAP NAS provides key advantages to QVR Pro. When running out of recording spaces, you can expand your storage capacity by connecting expansion enclosures to your NAS or by using QNAP’s VJBOD to use the unused storage space of another QNAP NAS.

"Open" is the core design concept of QVR Pro. QNAP invites developers to use QVR Pro’s resources to build their own network monitoring automation services. Various APIs are provided by QNAP to quickly integrate a wide range of cameras, configure event alerts and recordings, and to integrate with IoT devices.

**The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/go/qvr-nas-selector.

QuTScloud is the operating system for QNAP Cloud NAS virtual appliances. With the possibility of on-premises and cloud deployment, QuTScloud enables optimized cloud data usage and flexible resource allocation at a predictable monthly cost.

QES is the operating system for dual-controller QNAP NAS models. With FreeBSD and ZFS, QES is flash-optimized, capable of driving outstanding performance for all-flash storage arrays.

QNE Network is the operating system for QuCPE, QNAP"s universal customer premises equipment series. Run virtual network functions, freely configure software-defined networks, and enjoy benefits such as lowered costs and reduced management efforts.

QNAP Switch System (QSS) is the configuration interface for QNAP"s managed switch series. Enable management functions such as link aggregation, VLAN, and RSTP, to take care of your network topology with ease.

QNAP’s QuRouter OS simplifies managing high-speed and high-coverage LAN/WAN. With NAT, VPN, security, and QuWAN SD-WAN, network management is made easier and remote connections more secure.

QVR Elite is the subscription-based network video recorder software for QNAP"s QTS, QuTS hero, and QNE Network operating systems. Its low monthly fee enables homes and small businesses to build a cost-effective and flexible video surveillance system.

QVR Pro is the network video recorder software for QNAP"s QVR Pro video surveillance appliances. QVR Pro can be also used with a series of apps, such as face recognition and door access control, making it versatile for a range of scenarios.

QNAP smart video solutions provides integrated intelligent packages such as video conferencing and smart retail, boosting productivity for individuals and businesses.

QNAP DLNA media server allows you to stream the multimedia content stored on the NAS to various media devices throughout your house, while offering useful features to enhance your viewing experience, such as multi-language support and advanced privilege settings. It also supports using multiple network interfaces and adding subtitles on the fly when streaming videos.

The Media Library service must be enabled before using the DLNA server. You can enable the Media Library service in “Control Panel” > “Applications” > “Media Library” > “Enable Media Library”.

QNAP is a popular NAS vendor that provides a wide model line of network-attached storage (NAS) devices. There are many NAS models for home users, IT enthusiasts, small businesses, and enterprises. With many models available, choosing NAS that better meets your needs and budget is difficult. This blog post covers the classification of QNAP NAS devices and explains the main differences between them to help you select the right NAS. The article also contains a review of popular QNAP NAS models of different series to understand better what capabilities are provided by each.

Set-top design. These are tiny and affordable portable NAS devices for home usage. The most silent NAS device without fans (fanless), for example, is QNAP HS-453DX.

Before choosing the NAS model, pay attention to the number of disk bays, and check if the NAS model supports connecting an expansion unit (also called expansion chassis or expansion enclosure). If all drive bays of your NAS are full, connecting an expansion unit allows you to install more disk drives on your NAS system. Check also the maximum supported capacity of disk drives that can be added to the NAS device. QNAP NAS devices are supplied without disks. You choose and buy disks separately. Don’t use hard disk drives of the green series to avoid any issues.

USB ports are used to connect USB drives, printers, external network adapters, and other devices. Some QNAP NAS models support connecting a NAS device to a computer by using a USB 3.0 micro-B port, just like you would connect a USB HDD to a computer. However, there is a difference because you should use a network interface, not disk drives such as F:, G:, K:, which are usually used to access directly attached disk drives (in Windows for example). A virtual switch is used on a NAS device, and you can connect to your NAS by using the IP address of your NAS that is connected to your computer via USB. The name of this feature is USB QuickAccess.

The TVS series of QNAP NAS have more powerful specifications than the TS series, such as a more powerful CPU, additional PCIe slots, built-in transcoding engine, and so on.

PCIe slots are used to add a PCI adapter such as M.2 SSD without using a drive bay. Install a QNAP QM2 card, SSD drive, Ethernet adapter, Wi-Fi adapter, or a graphics card into a PCI Express slot to extend the functionalities of a QNAP NAS device.

An integrated audio controller has audio output and input ports (mini jack 3.5 mm). This option is especially useful for users who use NAS as a multimedia station at home to store and play media files, including video and audio. Connect headphones or speakers to your QNAP NAS, and listen to the audio content. Install Music Station on QNAP NAS from the App Center to play audio files. QNAP Video Station is software for watching and managing videos stored on NAS storage devices.

The number of RJ-45 ports for network connection. All modern QNAP NAS devices have at least one 1-Gbit Ethernet port (RJ-45). NAS models that have two or more Ethernet ports allow you to use port trunking (link aggregation) for better performance and higher bandwidth when multiple hosts are transferring data to/from NAS. With link aggregation, you can combine two physical links into one logical link. A switch must support IEEE 802.3ad.

As an alternative to dynamic link aggregation, you can configure multiple Ethernet ports on your QNAP NAS to use these modes: Balance-rr (Round-Robin), Active Backup, Balance XOR, Broadcast, Balance-tlb (Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing), and Balance-alb (Adaptive Load Balancing).

QNAP doesn’t provide a classification that allows you to see a NAS model name and easily identify the year of release and device class (unlike Synology). For this reason, a list of all currently supported QNAP NAS devices is provided below and is categorized by series. The first one or two digits usually mean the maximum number of disks that you can install into this NAS.

RAID (redundant array of independent disks). All QNAP NAS devices use software RAID for better compatibility and flexibility. You can recover data after connecting drives to a Linux machine and mounting them to the software RAID. A Marwell SATA controller is usually used for NAS devices with a SATA interface. Hardware RAID is not supported on QNAP NAS.

Supported RAID types: RAID 1, RAID 0, RAID 10, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 50, RAID 60, and hot spare configurations. You can expand a RAID group and change the RAID type of the RAID group without losing access to data. If you decide to buy a new QNAP NAS and move disk drives from your old QNAP NAS (disks worked in RAID) to the new one, the NAS into which you insert disks with data automatically determines that the disks should work in RAID. The NAS will also suggest you continue using these disks in RAID of the same type as previously used.

Supported file systems. QNAP NAS devices use only ext4 due to the high reliability of this file system. Use ext4 to format disk drives installed into NAS. Some NAS vendors allow you to use btrfs, but this file system is slower due to greater I/O latency and not ideal snapshot management (snapshots for block-based iSCSI LUN are not supported), which increases risks for operations and lowers efficiency (especially for 10 GbE connectivity).

Video Transcoding is the process of converting video files of different formats to a custom format, such as *.MP4, which is supported by most video players.On-the-fly transcoding tasks are used to convert and stream video in real-time while watching. In this case, more CPU resources are consumed. Background transcoding tasks are used to convert video in advance and decrease CPU usage, especially when multiple users want to watch video stored on NAS. Video files can be converted to different resolutions and saved in the @Transcode subfolder stored in the original folder with a source video file. Auto transcoding folder is used to convert the entire folder with video files. Select QNAP NAS devices with Intel or AMD 64-bit processors and at least 2 GB of memory to run transcoding. Use NAS as the Plex media server.

Qfinder Pro is a special utility that is installed on the client side and is used to search and manage QNAP NAS connected to the same network. This application can be installed on Windows, Linux, or macOS. When the search is completed, all QNAP devices found in the network are displayed in the interface of Qfinder Pro. This tool is useful to find NAS devices that are connected to the network but have not been configured yet and to obtain an IP address via DHCP. You can also use Qfinder Pro to update QNAP NAS firmware.

Support of installing Linux on NAS as a Linux Station package allows you to use Linux and run Linux applications on QNAP NAS with an x86-64 CPU. You can connect a monitor (to an HDMI port), keyboard, and mouse (into USB ports) to a QNAP NAS. You can also enable remote desktop connections and an SSH server on Linux. Container Station must be installed on NAS because Linux runs in a container.

Video Surveillance Station. QNAP NAS can be used as a surveillance station to record video from IP cameras to disks and view video from cameras in real time in a web browser. As an alternative, you can watch video from your cameras on a monitor connected to a QNAP NAS via HDMI. A Surveillance Station application must be installed. This feature is available for all Turbo NAS series (TS and TVS, for example, TS-128, TS-230, TS-231+, and TS-251.) Check the specifications of a particular QNAP NAS model to see whether this model supports QNAP features such as video surveillance. Different QNAP models provide a different number of free licenses for IP camera channels (2 to 8) and a maximum number of camera channels (8–80). You can buy more licenses for camera channels. See the full list of supported devices, the number of free IP camera channels, and the maximum number of supported IP camera channels on the official QNAP web page.

Now, when you know the main QNAP features and general NAS parameters, let’s review three popular QNAP NAS models of different classes and series to explore their features.

QNAP TS-231P3 is a two-bay NAS model positioned as a SOHO (small office/home office) solution. This NAS model is the successor of QNAP TS-231P and QNAP TS-231P2. QNAP TS-231P3 is affordable for most customers. This NAS is produced in a white chassis with the matte surface of the tower form-factor, and has two bays for 3.5" disks (2.5" disks can also be mounted, special holes are provided, SSD cache is supported). Disk drives are mounted with screws into bays with hot swapping and hot plugging. Disk trays are made of plastic. On the front panel, you can see the power button, one-touch copy button, one USB 3.0 port, and LED indicators. You can adjust the brightness of the LED light. A single 70-mm fan is used to cool NAS with disks. The fan speed can be adjusted. 19.2 db(A) is the reported level of noise, which is silent enough. Notice that hard disk drives make sounds that may increase the overall noise level of NAS.

QNAP TS-231P3 is based on the quad-core Annapurna Labs AL-214 1.7GHz processor, whose clock speed is 1.7 GHz (ARM-based). However, running LXC and Docker containers is supported on this NAS. Power consumption is extra low. Due to the ARM processor, this NAS model is not adapted for video transcoding.

External power supply is used to assemble NAS in a small chassis and simplifies the replacement of a power supply in case of failure. A connector for the 90W power supply is located on the rear panel. The weight of QNAP TS-231P3 without disks is just 1.46 kg.

Unlike many other NAS devices of this class, QNAP TS-231P3 has two RJ-45 ports (one Gigabit Ethernet port and one 2.5-Gbit Ethernet or 2.5GbE port), providing wide options for network connection, including link aggregation. Jumbo frames are supported.

NAS expansion enclosure models are supported. If you use two disks of maximum capacity in your QNAP TS-231P3, and you have insufficient disk space, connect QNAP NAS expansion enclosure (an expansion unit) with additional disk bays to your NAS, and install more disk drives into your NAS system. Here’s the list of supported QNAP expansion enclosure models that are connected via USB: TR-002, TR-004, TR-004U, UX-500P, and UX-800P.

If you like characteristics of QNAP TS-231P3, but NAS with two disk bays is not enough for you, consider buying a similar 4-bay model – QNAP TS-431P3.

QNAP TVS-473e is a 4-bay NAS device of the high-end series with powerful hardware, many different ports, and support of diverse QNAP features. This NAS is great for both home and office/business usage, and provides a wide set of capabilities. QNAP TVS-473e is an extended newer implementation of QNAP TVS-473. QNAP TVS-473e is manufactured in two modifications: TVS-473e-4G with 4 GB of RAM and TVS-473e-8G with 8GB of RAM (two 4-GB modules are installed). The maximum amount of memory is 64 GB. You can upgrade memory by installing SO-DIMM DDR4 RAM modules into four SO-DIMM DDR4 slots (4x16 GB). 512 MB DOM (Disk-On-Module) flash memory is used to store firmware. Two M.2 SSD slots are a useful option to install SSD drives without the need to occupy 3.5" SATA disk trays. I am reviewing QNAP TVS-473e-8G in this blog post.

QNAP TVS-473e is based on the powerful 64-bit AMD RC 421-BD quad-core processor (x86-64 architecture) with AMD Radeon R-7 graphics onboard. This NAS is manufactured in a grey chassis of the tower form factor with an internal power supply (ATX 250W) for better cooling with a fan.

On the front panel, there is one USB 3.0 type A port, one USB 3.0 micro-B port (for USB QuickAccess), LED indicators, power button, quick copy button (USB One Touch Copy), LCD display with Enter/Select buttons, and infrared receiver for remote control. QNAP remote control is sold separately (QNAP RM-IR004 remote control is compatible with QNAP TVS-473e).

On the rear panel, there are four RJ-45 ports, three USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI ports, and three 3.5 mm mini-jack audio ports (1 x line out, 2 x dynamic microphone). Don’t use the speakers and the line-out jack simultaneously because only one audio output can be used at the same time. There are four 1GbE network adapters with RJ-45 ports that support link aggregation (also known as NIC teaming). Jumbo frames and Wake on LAN are supported.

Dual PCI Express slots (PCIe Gen3 x4) can be used to install 10Gbe network cards, QM2 cards, or Wi-Fi network adapters into NAS. Install M.2 SSD cards for caching to boost the speed of copying data on NAS and don’t occupy 3.5" drive trays. QNAP provides the Qtier feature that automatically moves hot data to SSD drives and cold data (rarely accessed data) to lower-cost drives or drives with higher capacity to optimize performance, disk usage, and cost-efficiency. With a PCIe wireless network adapter, configure a Wi-Fi access point on your NAS. Be aware that M.2 SSD generates extensive heat, and ensure that M2 SSD modules are cooled.

Use two HDMI ports to connect a monitor or TV to watch media content in 4K resolution at 30 FPS without loading network. For better compatibility of external media players, run video transcoding tasks on QNAP TVS-473e to convert video files to a format that is supported by a player on your device (for example, TV). You can attach a keyboard and mouse to USB ports. These features transform your QNAP NAS into a smart video control system.

Surveillance station is supported. Use QNAP TVS-473e NAS to record videos from IP cameras and monitor them in real time.  Four free licenses are provided, but you can buy additional licenses for IP channels. Maximum 72 IP channels are supported. Running Docker and LXC containers is supported.

Many network protocols for sharing data are supported by QNAP TVS-473e. You can configure the iSCSI initiator and iSCSI target on this QNAP NAS. Block-based iSCSI LUN storage is a good choice for virtualization storage. Use your NAS to store VMware VM files by connecting an iSCSI target to an ESXi host as a datastore for virtual machines. Install fast disks and a 10GbE network adapter for maximum performance.

Hardware configuration allows you to do a lot of tasks by using this NAS. MacOS users will be pleased to find Apple Time Machine support and iTunes server, but the Thunderbolt port is missing. If NAS with four disk bays is not enough for you, consider buying NAS models with 6 or 8 bays of the x73e series. If you have already bought QNAP TVS-473e and all your storage space is full, consider buying a supported QNAP NAS expansion chassis.

You can do almost everything with QNAP TVS-473e. If you need a similar NAS with more drive bays, consider the other two QNAP NAS models of the TVS-x73e series: QNAP TVS-673e and QNAP TVS-873e with 6 and 8 drive bays respectively. The advantage of using the AMD processor in these NAS models is the absence of security bugs in CPU implementation. As you recall, security bugs were found in modern Intel processors (such as Meltdown and Spectre that were discovered at the beginning of 2018). Security patches may decrease CPU performance.

If the QNAP NAS devices explained above cannot provide enough capabilities for your business, consider buying QNAP TS-2483XU-RP, which is the ultimate enterprise solution for working with large amounts of data with high reliability. This NAS server is manufactured in the 4U rackmount chassis and has a powerful 64-bit Intel Xeon E-2136 6-core 3.3 GHz processor (x86-64 architecture). Frequency can burst up to 4.5 GHz during high loads. The advantage of a 4-unit case is the possibility to use full-height and full-length boards and cards. From the front panel, access drive bays, and all ports are located on the rear panel. Four 92-mm fans in the chassis are used to cool the components of this QNAP NAS server. The measured noise level is 28.7 db(A).

QNAP TS-2483XU-RP has 24 3.5-inch drive bays for SATA hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD). 2.5-inch drives can be mounted into 3.5-inch drive trays. Owners of this QNAP NAS server can build 384-GB storage with 16-TB hard disks nowadays. Hot spare of disks is supported.

By default, there are 16 GB of DDR4 ECC RAM (two 8-GB modules) in this QNAP server. ECC memory can detect and correct errors to prevent data loss and downtime for critical applications. The server has 4 Long-DIMM slots for RAM, and the maximum supported memory capacity is 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) for the highest performance.

Four built-in RJ-45 ports of 1GbE Ethernet adapters can be configured to work in the link aggregation mode for better network performance. The alternative option is to use the server as the network gateway. There is also a Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx network interface controller in this QNAP server that provides advanced features, such as analyzing network traffic without loading the CPU and direct memory access technology to transfer Ethernet frames. This network interface controller (NIC) is a smart network card with two 10GbE SFP+ ports and iSER support (including iSCSI extensions for RDMA protocol) to increase random access speed and decrease access time. This feature is useful for VMware virtualization storage. This NIC is pre-installed into the PCIe slot of the mainboard of the NAS server.

TS-2483XU-RP has 5 PCIe slots (Gen3 x4, Gen3 x8, three Gen2 x4 ports). You can install different expansion cards such as high-profile graphics cards, M.2 SSD cache cards, 40Gbe/25GbE/10GbE network cards, SAS expansion cards. QNAP provides universal 10GbE PCIe network cards with two SSD included and PCIe cards with four SSD drives for those who need only additional SSD storage without network adapters. The QTier feature is supported for disk arrays with SSD and HDD. Use a SAS expansion card to attach expansion enclosures such as REXP-1620U-RP, REXP-1220U-RP to install more disk drives into your storage system based on TS-2483XU-RP. Expansion modules for 16 disks are available. A graphics card can be used to run applications that use GPU. Read the compatibility list before buying a video card because not all PCIe video adapters are supported by the QNAP TS-2483XU-RP NAS server.

This QNAP NAS server is an ideal choice for a surveillance station because the device supports up to 128 monitoring channels (8 free licenses for IP channels are included). Over 5,000 IP cameras are supported. Running containers is supported, but there is no USB QuickAccess.

TS-2483XU-RP is best suited for these purposes: video surveillance and recording, a file server (storing and sharing files), hosting VM files by using block-based iSCSI LUN, video transcoding, storing backups. This QNAP NAS server cannot be used to run heavy virtual machines/many virtual machines, perform artificial intelligence tasks, or as a Python computer node. Flexible capabilities to use SSD are provided – you can install SSD as a PCIe card, M.2 card, and 2.5-inch SATA drives.

QNAP storage is ideal for storing backups. This is important for data protection and operational continuity. QNAP NAS devices support installing different applications including backup software. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on many QNAP NAS devices to back up data regularly to QNAP storage and other destination locations, such as Amazon S3. NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports backup of VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, Amazon EC2 instances, physical Linux machines, Windows machines, Oracle databases, and Microsoft 365. I recommend that you choose QNAP NAS with x86-64 based processor for better performance and compatibility.

QNAP (Quality Network Appliance Provider) Systems Inc. is a corporation whose main specialization is producing network-attached storage (NAS) appliances. QNAP was founded in 2004.

Use the web interface provided by your QNAP NAS. Enter the IP address of your NAS in a web browser. If you don’t know the QNAP NAS IP address, use the Qfinder Pro tool on the client machine. Then, configure SSH access on your NAS if you prefer the command-line interface.

Yes, you can. If your QNAP NAS model has a USB port for QuickAccess, you can connect your NAS to a computer with a USB cable. In this case, a virtual network connection is created, and disks of NAS cannot be accessed as disk volumes such as F:, G:, or H:, as it is usually done for traditional external USB disks in Windows. The idea is the same for Linux and macOS.

It depends on what you need the NAS for. As for QNAP NAS devices explained in this blog post, QNAP TVS-473e is a better choice for the home user. If you need to use more disks, consider NAS devices with a higher number of drive bays from these series. If, for any reason, NAS devices that were reviewed in this blog post don’t meet your requirements, check the full NAS model catalog on the QNAP website to choose the best NAS for you.

QNAP is one of the leading NAS vendors producing many NAS models of different classes for different consumers. This blog post has covered QNAP features to help you choose QNAP storage that better meets your needs. Define how much storage space you need, how scalable your NAS should be, which additional features and CPU performance you need, and your price range to choose a suitable NAS with an optimal set of QNAP features. Using QNAP NAS as network backup storage is common. Opt for a QNAP NAS with 64-bit Intel or AMD processors and use NAKIVO Backup & Replication to back up your data to a NAS device.

Last month, we reviewed QNAP’s x51 line of dual-core Bay Trail D Celeron NASes aimed at well-heeled Home and SOHO buyers. This time, we’re looking at the x53 Pro family intended for small-biz customers.

None of the x53 Pros have eSATA ports, as is evident in the view of the rear panels below. All four models have a single HDMI port and integrated IR MCE Remote compatible sensor. In keeping with many of QNAP’s other "Pro" offerings, all models have lockable drive trays and all except the two-bay have LCD status panels.

Key hardware features are compiled in the table below. Note there are two versions of each model; one with 2 GB of RAM and the other with 8 GB. If you don’t like QNAP’s RAM pricing, you can upgrade the RAM yourself.

I tried disassembling the TS-653 Pro sample to take the photos and identify components. I got all the way to getting the board free, but couldn’t get it untethered from its front panel connection to take clean photos. The board is different than the one I found in the TS-451. But, then again, the TS-x51 series uses a different board for its six and eight bay versions than for its two and four bay.

The 6 hr 45 min to completely build and resync 4 x 3 TB RAID 5 volume was significantly improved from the 17h 20m we measured with the TS-451. Unlike Thecus and Synology, QNAP does not offer the option to skip a bad block test, which can speed volume resync times significantly.

Using the NAS Ranker with no filtering shows the x53 Pro pack trailing Thecus’ i3-based N8850 Top Tower, Pentium G620-based N6850 Top Tower and Xeon-based N10850. The QNAP TS-653 Pro and TS-853 Pro look to be priced about $200 less than their Thecus compeition, however.

I know I say this a lot. But QNAP is known for having a lot of NASes to choose from, making buying decisions more difficult than they perhaps should be. I’ll reprise Craig’s price comparison table from his TS-251/451 review to boil it down. Keep in mind that all the x51 models come with 1 GB of RAM, while their x53 Pro equivalents come with 2 GB. Both families can be expanded to a maximum of 8 GB.

As noted earlier, to get your money’s worth from a TS-x53, you’re going to need to use aggregated ports with multiple clients and / or load it up with RAM and run multiple VMs. But if you’re just looking to get the most of a single Gigabit Ethernet connection for large file transfers and want to buy QNAP, save yourself some dough and get a TS-X51 instead.

QNAP has built NAS units for years and we are finally getting to take a look at a NAS unit from a category we have not covered for the company. Specifically, while we have looked at both rackmount and low-end desktop NAS units from QNAP, the QNAP TVS-h1288X we are reviewing here is best described as a mix of many different concepts. It is bigger than the company’s 2-bay, 4-bay, and similar units, but it is still a desktop form factor. It has twelve drive bays, and that is before one gets to the internal storage options. It is a QNAP NAS, but that now includes ZFS.

Realistically, the overarching thought is that QNAP has built the edge server many STH readers have been trying to build for over a decade. That is a bit of a bold statement, but upon reflecting on what you will soon read, it will make a lot of sense if one starts to read this review with that contextual model.

The unit itself is 9.24 × 14.56 × 12.59 inches and is designed to be a large desktop chassis. While there are some NASes on the market designed to be compact 2-4 bay models and others that are designed to be rack-mounted, this is firmly a unit designed to be used in a SMB/ home office setting. There are simple features such as a LCD status display and a front USB port to make data importing easier that we often do not see on rackmount units.

One of the nice features here is that the unit has tool-less vibration mitigating drive trays. When we reviewed the QNAP GM-1002 3U Dual ZFS NAS, we noted how drives with screws take longer to service. Here, we have drive trays that use simple snap-in pegs to secure drives. There is a recommended option for adding screws for shipping security as well. One can see the blue vibration dampeners that help further isolate vibrations to and from the drives.

One item that you may not immediately notice is that QNAP has a system of vents around the drives to keep cool air flowing. This is a small touch, but it is one that we sometimes see self-build chassis lack. Between the venting and the front/ rear airflow, this keeps drives cool.

We did want to show the LCD display and one other key feature. QNAP has LED status lights that are green for functioning drives and red for drives with errors. Here we have two drives that are marked as having errors to let us show this. One can also see the status screen. This has the basic status that the system is shutting down, but can also show alerts for drive failures, IP addresses, and other important information.

This is one of those features that separates this NAS from lower-end units and many self-built offerings. The motherboard has specific headers to drive the LCD and QNAP’s QuTS hero software helps display relevant information.

Perhaps the biggest rear feature is around the networking. There are four RJ45 ports that are common in this class of NAS. Instead of these being 1GbE ports as companies like Synology generally use, QNAP has four 2.5GbE ports that can run at the lower 1GbE speeds as well. We are seeing more 2.5GbE gear so it is nice that QNAP is using a more modern standard. Not everyone will use this, but it only adds a few dollars to a BOM cost and offers 2.5x the performance of the older standards.

We use a lot of SFP+ and know many of our readers do as well. Still, one can use a SFP+ to 10Gbase-T Adapter Module and convert the interfaces. Also as a PCIe card, it seems like this is something that QNAP could offer a different option on very easily. In this class of NAS, we are just thankful that QNAP added a higher-speed network option. The Synology DiskStation DS3617xs is perhaps this unit’s closest competitor at the same price point and only has 4x 1GbE while QNAP is offering 2x 10GbE and 4x 2.5GbE. There is a massive delta on the networking side.

For those looking at making the move away from cloud platforms and towards their own private server, the new QNAP TS-464 NAS ticks ALOT of boxes. Arriving as the latest release in their long. long-running flagship series of Prosumer/SMB hardware (following the TS-453D, TS-453B, TS-453A, etc) around every 2-2.5 years, this new system is easily the best iteration of this tier of their portfolio they have ever released. That shouldn’t be a surprise really, as the rest of the hardware industry improves in power, performance and efficiency, you would expect each release to be better than the last anyway. However, it is how the TS-464 has evolved from it’s predecessors and an arguably more mature stance on its hardware design compared with those before it from QNAP that make this an incredibly interesting NAS to review. I have long stated that when it comes to NAS hardware, QNAP still continues to be the innovators, providing the most cutting edge hardware vs value in the industry. What makes the TS-464 series stand out further though is the sheer scope of its hardware, providing some unparalleled levels of scalability in its architecture that are unmatched elsewhere. In software, despite the brand providing its complete OS level platform, services and applications in QTS, the brand has suffered something of a tumultuous 18+ months with a spate of ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities leading to confidence in the platform being shaken. Therefore QNAP hopes that with the release of their latest software revision QTS 5, their new hardware series in the TS-x64 onwards and they’re doubling down on security tools, defaults and a more lock-key approach to their platform internally, that they can move forward from these public misgivings.

The TS-464 comfortably arrives with the best hardware in its tier of the NAS market and that is something that QNAP has always been quite good at. Even if you rewind just 5 years, the level of hardware scalability and ease of upgradability that the TS-464 provides is frankly incredible and, fast forward to 2022, is still pretty unmatched. A Desktop 4-Bay NAS (eg Prosumer RAID 5 storage) has always been the next confident step for users who are tired of their hands being tied by subscription cloud services from Google, OneDrive and DropBox, who are looking for their own competent, flexible and fully-featured private server. In the TS-464 NAS, you find a system that is unquestionable the best hardware for your money you can possibly get right now. In software, things are a little less straightforward. QTS 5, although massively software and service-rich, arrives as a complete operating system in your web browser with multiple mobile/desktop clients and hundreds of applications and apps that can be installed at the touch of a button – which can all too often be something of a steep learning curve for many. Lacking the chewable, user-friendly nature of many of their rivals, QNAP and its software/service still have a tendency to be a bit of an information overload that can quickly intimidate the novice. However, for those that are looking for a system that is completely customizable in how/when/where you want data presented to you, as well as a wide degree of 3rd party support, QNAP and QTS 5 still manages to provide a huge degree of brand-unique service that are simply not available elsewhere. Just be prepared to invest your time wisely in its setup and more time ensuring the system is perfect for your needs.