Let's face it, 4-bay NAS devices are a dime a dozen these days. Every time you turn around, some company has announced a new and improved model with a faster processor and even more expansion ports. What they all seem have in common, though, is that they're big, blocky and not very pleasant to look at. Needless to say, this isn't the case with the QNAP TS-453mini. By moving the drive bays from the front to the top, QNAP's new device takes up less desktop space than most other 4-bay NAS servers. Also, with its piano black finish, whisper quiet heat exhaust and skyline LED, the TS-453mini is just as much at home in the living room as it is in the office.
In addition to its stylish, vertical design, the TS-453mini is packed full of features for both home and small business environments. The device is powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron 2.0GHz processor and comes equipped with either 2GB or 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports. The TS-443mini also runs QNAP's QTS operating system which provides cross platform file sharing and backups, media streaming, private cloud storage and remote access via QNAP's mobile apps and MyCloudNAS service. These capabilities can be extended even further through the App Center. By installing on-demand apps, you can run multiple VM's, manage and monitor IP cameras and even use the TS-453mini as a PC with QNAP's exclusive QvPC technology.
As far as performance goes, the TS-453mini wasn't the fastest 4-bay NAS to come through the 'Labs. Nevertheless, the device performed relatively well throughout our tests, reading at speeds as high as 112 MB/s and writing at more than 107 MB/s using only a single NIC. The SSD cache also gave the TS-453mini's random read performance a considerable boost, increasing, in some cases, the number of IOPS by more than 20x.
The TS-453mini is available now as a diskless system. The 2GB version reviewed here currently sells for about at $529 on Amazon. Otherwise, the 8GB version can be picked up for about $140 more.
Highs:
- Space-efficient vertical design
- Powered by quad-core Intel Celeron processor
- Four hot-swap drive bays
- Can be used as a PC with exclusive QvPC Technology
- Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD and single disk configurations
- File sharing and backups for Windows, Mac and Linux clients
- Web, database, print and FTP servers
- Supports iSCSI protocol for virtualized and clustered environments
- Two Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Multiple USB 3.0 expansion ports
- Built-in HDMI interface
- Easy to use web interface
- Remotely accessible from web browsers and mobile devices
- Supports SSD caching
- Stylish glossy look and skyline LED
- Includes IR remote control
- Quiet operation
- 2 year warranty
Lows:
- Pricey
- Not available with hard drives
