Exterior

The TS-451 looks drastically different from QNAP's other products. No more gloomy greyish and brushed aluminum finish, this NAS comes with a nice white enclosure with a silver frame on the front, which looks cool! Only the plastic trays are a let down, but we will talk about those later.

The aforementioned silver frame includes all LED indicators, the on/off and copy buttons, and a USB 3.0 port. As we already mentioned, QNAP put a USB 3.0 port into the front, so you don't have to search the NAS' rear I/O anymore to hook up a USB 3.0 storage device.


A label on top of the NAS depicts the HDD sequence, but it unfortunately won't help a lot since the trays aren't numbered and there aren't enough stickers in the bundle to number all HDDs. Getting your own stickers won't be too difficult, but given the TS-451 isn't a budget or mainstream unit, we would have preferred there to be enough stickers out of the box. (QNAP informed us the following after the review: We removed the individual HDD sequence sticker on each HDD tray because since our NAS firmware 3.8 we support HDD re-ordering. This means that HDDs can be installed on different slots without any issues on the server's operation.)


One of two sides comes with ventilation holes.


The fan grill in the rear occupies a lot of room, and on its right are all the I/O ports. The latter include two Ethernet ports, two USB 2.0 and a single USB 3.0 port, and an HDMI port. Here also reside the power-input socket and the reset switch, buried inside the enclosure, so you will need a needle or something as thin and long to reset the unit. Strangely enough, a warranty sticker resides just above the reset switch, so don't open the NAS to upgrade your memory, for instance, or you will void the warranty, which is absurd given QNAP advises users to upgrade the server's memory in order to take advantage of the virtualization station's functions. Mentioning the matter to QNAP revealed that only the first batches came with the warranty sticker on the enclosure. Every other TS-451 will have its sticker on the mainboard instead, so users will easily be able to open the NAS up for a memory upgrade, although installing another SO-DIMM can prove difficult all on its own.


A small label on the NAS' bottom covers its power specifications, and there are also four rubber feet to ensure the unit doesn't move around. An arrow near the top-left also points to a lock which you only have to slide to the left after removing all the screws to open the enclosure.


The trays don't feature any locks, so this NAS is mostly for home environments, where physical data security isn't an essential feature.


The trays look cheap and of low quality, especially compared to the fully metallic ones the TS-x69 and TS-x70 units are equipped with. A big letdown, we expected such an expensive NAS to come with higher quality trays.


These trays also don't come with sound-dampening materials attached.