QNAP KMU / SMB - Middle-Range NAS

With our two test configurations, the TS-464 meets or beats the older model TS-453D, which shouldn’t be too surprising. While in some cases these performance differences may not seem too great, considering the additional capabilities of the TS-464, much greater performance can be achieved.

Today, we’re writing the QNAP TS-673A 6 Bay NAS review to give you details about QNAP’s latest powerful solution. Some years ago, hardware-heavy and powerful solutions were present, yet these were extremely expensive. Then, there were cheaper options but underpowered, thus, bringing disappointments early on. But it’s different this time since the TS-673A 6 Bay NAS is an optimised middle-ground solution compared to earlier products. Not only that, but it even offers hardware options that aren’t available on its competitors’ solutions. So will this 6 Bay NAS solution be another system that will drown in the noise? Or will it be something that will emerge and stand out from the crowd? Let’s find out in our QNAP TS-673A 6 Bay NAS review and see if this product deserves your attention.

If you are a fan of NAS storage or are in the market for a solid piece of desktop data storage hardware, then there is a good chance that you have been looking at 8-Bay solutions. Arguably, at this capacity of storage (both in network-accessible and/or direct accessible varieties) that things get series. Serious considerations for surveillance, virtualization, expandability and upgradability all become dealbreakers for buyers and although this is not the first 8 HDD system that QNAP has released, it has to be said that this is potentially one of the most mature releases I have seen from the brand in quite a few years. In the past we have typically found solutions that were incredibly powerful, hardware heavy but expensive or solutions that were affordable but underpowered, leading to early disappointment. The new TS-873A is very much a different beast, as it promises a much better middle ground than solutions that came before, as well as still managing to provide hardware options that are simply not available on rival solutions. So, is this new 8-Bay solution just another NAS system that gets lost in the noise, or is it something that genuinely breaks the mould? Perhaps somewhere in between? Let’s find out if the QNAP TS-873A NAS deserves your data?

I know I have said this like 10x in the review, but I genuinely respect how mature and focused the TS-873A is, especially when compared with a number of more ‘throw as much hardware as possible at it’ based 8-Bay devices are available from QNAP in their portfolio. A much better balance of internal and external hardware result in a system that feels significantly more capable of business that most devices that the brand have produced in the last 12 months. Add to this that the TS-873A arrives with the QNAP QuTS Hero ZFS platform and you have a system that will tick ALOT of boxes for both novice NAS buyers and more worldly data storage experts. Seemingly taking a leaf out of the books of Synology and their DS1821+ in terms of keeping it straight forward, this solutions sits very well in the portfolio.

QNAP carves a niche with the TBS-464. This portable NAS has no direct competition, packing four M.2 2280 PCIe drives into a space smaller than a laptop. It runs almost without noise. Our performance testing validated QNAP’s claimed throughput. Using Sabrent Rocket drives, we saw 578MB/s read and 572MB/s write in both SMB and iSCSI in our 128K sequential test. Those are the best numbers you can hope for, as the TBS-464 is bottlenecked by its two 2.5GbE ports. Having 10GbE ports would have given it much more headroom, though with increased heat and cost. We would at least like the option. Though the TBS-464 isn’t inexpensive, especially after adding drives, it can easily pay for itself as a portable storage device, offering far superior management and productivity features than could a standalone storage drive enclosure. Provided you don’t need massive throughput and can benefit from the shrunken size and noise profile, this little NAS gets our recommendation.

So the TS-453DU isn’t a monster all in one server like some of Qnaps higher-end SMB and enterprise NAS are. But not everyone needs all of that if you don’t need the processing power systems like that just mean more heat, more power usage, and more noise. The TS-453DU comes in with its Celeron J4125 which is a quad-core CPU running at 2.0 GHz with a burst speed of 2.7 GHz and it does exactly what it needs to do right. The J4125 has a TDP of just 10 watts which means it doesn’t need active cooling at all and the entire TS-453DU is expected to pull around 32 watts with hard drives spooled up or 17 watts when they are sleeping. That is comparable to running two 60 watt equivalent CFL light bulbs, remember when we all switches to those because of the power they saved! The kicker though is that the system can still handle all of the storage duties you can throw at it and run countless programs like Plex and all of the other programs that Qnap and others have developed. Seriously, once you start digging into some of the apps you have everything you need to take everything back off of the cloud for your privacy.

Zusammenfassend bietet der QNAP TS-664 eine ausgezeichnete Lösung zur sicheren Datenverwaltung. Mit zahlreichen Anpassungsmöglichkeiten und einem leistungsfähigen Betriebssystem kann das Gerät in zahlreichen Szenarien eingesetzt werden. Der Quad-Core-Prozessor und die leistungsfähigen Schnittstellen machen den QNAP TS-664 zu einem echten Allround-Talent.

Das TS-410E von Qnap ist ein leistungsstarkes und robustes NAS-System, das mit bis zu vier 2,5-Zoll-SATA-SSDs betrieben werden kann.

Das TS-253D ist ein interessantesNAS, das durch sein Betriebssystem auch Medienserver, SQL-Server, Downloadserver und viel mehr sein kann.

Die QNAP TS-253D mit Intel Celeron J4125, zwei 2,5-Gigabit-LAN-Anschlüssen samt Link Aggregation, einem PCIe-x4-Slot und einem HDMI-Ausgang überzeugt im Test. Mit einer 10-GbE-Erweiterungskarte kommen selbst SSDs als Hauptspeicher an ihre Grenzen. Nur M.2-Steckplätze für einen NVMe-SSD-Cache fehlen dem Modell.

The QNAP TS-253D is one of the latest NAS devices to come from QNAP. While on the exterior the TS-253D doesn’t look a whole lot different than the other QNAP offerings, it is what’s under the hood, specifically on the networking side of things that makes it stand out. Typical small NAS units feature single or dual 1 Gbps ports. The TS-253D features dual 2.5 Gbps ports and sports a PCIe slot to upgrade the unit to 10 Gbps if the need so arises. In the home networking arena, I’ve been patiently waiting for devices and networking products to filter down that are faster than 1 Gbps. Over the last year, we’ve seen a few products designed for home or home office that support 2.5 or 5 Gbps. With the convenience of wireless and now with Wifi 6 products on the market reaching real-world transfer speeds of 900-1000 Mbps and as 2.5 and 5g products drop in price, it is time for the wired components of the network to play a bit of catch up and provide enough bandwidth to support faster devices.

Als ich bei meinem letzten Taiwan-Aufenthalt dem QNAP-Hauptquartier einen Besuch abstattete, war die neue TS-x53D-Serie noch in der finalen Planungs-Phase. Knapp ein halbes Jahr später erfolgt der Marktstart und der Hersteller zeigt sich, trotz der aktuell angespannten Marktlage, durchaus zuversichtlich, was die Kundenakzeptanz angeht. Dank moderner Technik und einem kompakten Design könnte das QNAP durchaus gelingen.