The Synology DS718+ is a high-end 2-bay NAS with good performance, silent operation, and low power consumption. Its strong advantage is that its storage capacity can easily be expanded with five additional drives (seven in total) since it is compatible with the optional DX513 expansion unit.
The QNAP TS-431P2 is a home NAS for demanding users, offering good performance along with increased storage capabilities. Its external looks are appealing as well due to its modern design with a white finish, so it won't look strange in a modern office or your living room.
The Synology DS918+ is the successor to the DS916+ and features a new CPU, more RAM, a pair of M.2 slots, and trays with locks. Strangely enough, the older model seems to perform better in real-life scenarios; however, the DS918+ is fast enough to still meet the increasing demands of a home user.
The TS-453B is a feature-rich four-bay NAS that includes an OLED screen, 4K playback, HDMI port, and a PCIe expansion port for QNAP's QM2 expansion boards. Using various cards, you can add up to two M.2 slots and 10 Gigabit networking to the NAS, in addition to the two 1000 Mb/s ports.
The N2810 Pro from Thecus uses an Intel Celeron N3160 Quad-Core CPU, which offers sufficient computing power for entry level users who are on a tight budget. It also supports high-speed transfers using two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and comes with HDMI as well as DisplayPort connectivity.
The TerraMaster F2-220 is an affordable two-bay NAS featuring good performance and nice looks thanks to its aluminum enclosure. This Intel Dual-Core powered storage system uses Linux under the hood and is very energy-efficient with only 12 W power consumed in idle.
The combination of an affordable NAS like the Synology DS416j, a couple good IP cameras, and a pair of reliable HDDs can make for a nice surveillance system with enhanced surveillance capabilities. Synology's Surveillance Station software plays a key role since it is one of the most advanced surveillance apps around.
The AS6208T is a multi-bay NAS with an Intel quad-core CPU that offers good performance while consuming very little energy. An 8-bay NAS is mostly for business environments where increased storage capacity is a necessary feature.
The RackStation RS816 is a rackmount NAS for small business environments in need of a capable and highly energy efficient file server. It features four drive slots packed into a 19" rack 1U height enclosure. This Synology NAS is powered by an energy efficient Marvell ARM processor.
The TVS-682T is an incredibly high-end QNAP NAS with a fast Skylake Intel CPU and 8 GB of RAM. Its two Thunderbolt ports and two 10GBase-T ports even allow it to offer blazing fast network transfer speeds, which makes smooth 4K video transfers are a definite reality.
The DS916+ is mostly for professional users, or enthusiasts who can afford it. It is powered by a capable quad-core Intel CPU with good performance and low power consumption even when taxed heavily.
The AS3202T is equipped with a quad-core Intel CPU, which enables it to handle up to 4K resolution multimedia content playback. This means the AS3202T can also play a central role in a multimedia set-up while still acting as a regular NAS with up to 16 TB of storage capacity.
During our last stay at CES, QNAP surprised us with the TBS-453A NAS, an incredibly small NAS since it only takes M.2 SSDs. While not a NAS for the average user, it does have some really cool features we are going to explore in this review.
The DS216play is a multimedia-oriented NAS despite the fact that it doesn't feature an HDMI port. It supports 4K video transcoding, and its highly efficient SoC is crucial in reducing its overall power consumption.
The TS-453A is a multimedia-specific NAS server capable of 4K video playback. This unit comes with not only one, but two HDMI ports, which allows it to be connected to two monitors or TVs.
Synology has lots of offerings for enthusiast home users and the DS416 is one of them. It uses an Annapurna Labs Dual-Core SoC that offers enough computing power while consuming very little energy.
The AS3102T is an affordable NAS by Asustor, capable of 4K-multimedia playback. On top of that, it is equipped with an HDMI port and features hardware encryption, which allows it to provide good speeds with encrypted file transfers.
The Synology DS715 is a quad-core CPU NAS with two Ethernet ports. Having two drive bays it is ideal to meet the demands of enthusiast home users and small business environments, but can also expanded to support a total of seven drives.
The TS-451 was released last year, and it was a milestone for QNAP since it featured a new external design. Today, we will evaluate its successor, the TS-451+ with an upgraded CPU and the ability to take up to 8 GB of RAM.
The Synology DS215+ is a business NAS for centralized backup and the protection of critical data. Our tests also show that it offers high performance while consuming very little power.
The N5810 Pro by Thecus is an enthusiast-grade NAS that not only includes the usual features we expect to find in a product of its category as it also comes with its very own mini-UPS device as a precursory measure against data losses caused by power cuts.
The Asustor AS5102T is ideal for home users in need of a NAS that can fullfill multiple roles, including that of a simple data-storage device. This NAS can easily be the centerpiece of a multimedia setup because of its HDMI and S/PDIF ports, or it could play a key role in a surveillance system.
Today, we get to look at and test a NAS from Netgear for the very first time. The ReadyNAS 202 is powered by a Cortex A15 CPU and has two Gigabit Ethernet ports for faster network speeds. Its key feature is that it uses the BTRFS file system instead of the far more common EXT4 file system.
Synology's DS1515+ mostly addresses SMB environments since it can combine with two DX513 expansion units to support up to 15 HDDs. Today, we have the opportunity to evaluate a DS1515+ along with one of Synology's expansion units, which make for a great opportunity to figure out how this combination performs in various usage scenarios.
QNAP has for the first time used an AMD CPU with one of their NAS offerings. The new series is codenamed TVS-x63, and today, we will evaluate the TVS-463, which, as its model number implies, can take up to four HDDs. It is also 10GbE ready through an optional expansion card.
