QNAP TS-451 Four Bay SOHO NAS Review

Introduction

A few years ago, I acquired my first NAS appliance. The unit was initially to be used as a pure storage solution, but that quickly changed as the NAS market began to change. What began with lackluster Marvell SoCs that could barely reach 70 MB/s transferring data, rapidly turned into Atom processors and HDMI ports that started showing up on the back of NAS appliances.

Now three years have passed, and most, if not all, NAS appliances ship with a HDMI port and an Intel CPU or SoC. While the latter is usually similar in performance to the Marvell setup, today QNAP aims to change that with the release of the TS-451.

The TS-451 is QNAP's response to the overwhelming customer demand for media. Customers want the ability to play, record, and share their media more than ever before; did I mention transcoding?

The latest appliance from QNAP, takes is design from Intel's Bay Trail D platform; more specifically, the Celeron J1800 SoC (System on Chip). This SoC carries a clock speed of 2.4GHz, with a turbo frequency of 2.58GHz, but that's not the main selling point of the platform. Many customers buy this platform because of Intel's Quick Sync technology.

Quick Sync is Intel's hardware video encoding and decoding technology, which was first launched with the Sandy Bridge platform. Now in its 3rd generation, Quick Sync supports H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1, and H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 standards.

Virtualization Station is also launching with the TS-451. QNAP Virtualization Station enables virtualized desktop operations on the Turbo NAS, allowing you remote access to your OS of choice right on your NAS. As you can see in the image above, many modern operating systems are supported.

Pricing and Availability

MSRP for the QNAP TS-451 is set at $699.99, with a two-year warranty.

PRICING: You can find the QNAP TS-451 for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The QNAP TS-451 retails for $699.00 at Amazon.

Canada: The QNAP TS-451 retails for CDN$917.97 at Amazon Canada.