QNAP 4 Bay NAS with 12TB Storage Capacity, Preconfigured RAID 5 Seagate IronWolf Drives Bundle (TS-451+-2G-44R-US)

I have installed this NAS in my home network 3 weeks ago and am exceedingly pleased with its functionality and performance. I upgraded the RAM to 16GB using Crucial memory, so my review of performance is TS251+ with 16GB RAM included.I have a few areas of average rating which I will describe below, and even with those areas factored in I give this entry level NAS a 5 of 5 stars for value for money and have no reservation recommending it to others.My favorite features:1. Automated backups - I backup 4 MacBook and iMac computers via time machine to the NAS, 3 windows based computers to the NAS, 4 iPhones camera photos to the NAS and it is awesome. Once setup, backups have performed without intervention and perfectly.2. Video Surveillance- I am using the free and included license for 8 IP cameras. It is flawless motion detection and recording to the NAS hard drives. I access it both in and outside the home.3. Photo library - I moved all my iPhone and digital camera captured photos taken over 20 years to the NAS. The Qphoto program included with the NAS is easy to use and let’s the entire family view the photos without having to sit in front of a Mac and Photos where I used to store them. Liberating and peace of mind that they are redundantly backed up on 2 drives so that if one fails, i still have a copy. As a good practice, I still backup the photos to an external drive and to cloud provider BackBlaze. The NAS has automatic connectors to Amazon Web services and Backblaze and a few others, you need to pick your provider and decide how much you want to spend in storage. BackBlaze was my choice as it is lower cost and reliable.4. Plex server - the NAS allows you to host a Plex server to access video, podcast, web, photo, and live TV with a tuner attached. It’s powerful enough to handle the load of 4 TVs viewing content at same time and a few streamers from phone or tablet too. Very pleased with the integrated functionality for Plex.My least favorite features and things I want QNAP to improve are:1. Noise level - unless you plan on spending big dollars on solid state drives to install in the 2 bays, expect noise of spinning hard drives. I have installed Seagate Iron Wolf 10tb drives configured as RAID 1. That means if one drive fails, the other has a full copy of content and you don’t lose data. The drives pop and crackle all day and night as data is written to and from the drives. I also tried WD Red drives and am much happier with the sound of those, but still enough noise to notice as you hear it operate. Once SSD drives become higher capacity and lower in costs, I will swap out the spinning drives.2. 2 bays is ok, but limiting on future expansion- I would recommend that buyers consider the 451+ 4 bay option. This allows expansion for future. I like the unit with 2 bays and it is functional, I would love 4 bays. Lesson learned for next time!3. Tech Support - I have relied on you tubers and written docs from QNAP. Those are 2 valuable sources of information to setup and troubleshoot. Live support is not available in US and not web chat. My logged question to tech support was answered in 3 business days, and with very minimal response with no links or information provided to elaborate about the solution mentioned. Don’t plan to rely on their tech support agents or a call center. YouTube has many many videos that help you setup and configure the NAS.4. The OpenVPN feature doesn’t work - I wanted to use NORDvpn or ExpressVPN to secure the web traffic but after 20 hours of trying to get it working, I gave up and put a ASUS vpn router in my home network to handle vpn services. The QNAP says it is connected to those services from its program Qvpn, however my IP address is leaking and still visible on the open net. I don’t trust it is truly “connected” as a result. As an aside, ASUS rt86u is an excellent vpn enabler home router and I highly recommend it. It covers all devices in your network with VPN and works with all openvpn providers like NORDvpn and ExpressVPN.I am very happy with the purchase and would recommend the to 251+ to any home user wanting backup network storage and awesome media features.

This NAS is really nice. Although this is my first home NAS and so I can’t compare this with other brands. But I can say TS-251+ exceeded my expectations. Another user here truly said, the Qnap software itself justifies the cost to a great extent. So many features. I’m using 2gb version and I didn’t find RAM usage more than 70% ever considering I’m not using virtualization.Now, as others stated, you might find little complications during the initial setup. But I did my homework and the setup was a breeze.First thing first, use the Qfinder to start. That’s the best suggestion I found when I was researching. I found so many users having issues with cloud installation. So I chose Qfinder (from Windows 10 machine). Check this tutorial, it really helped me a lot[...]When you open Qfinder, it will show you the NAS. First time you double click on the name and it would ask you for ‘Initializing the NAS’, click okay and proceed with the wizard. I did set ‘Static IP’ during the setup and also selected ‘Bad block scan’ and that took around 10/11hrs to finish (2 x blank 4tb WD Red RAID1).Next I updated the firmware from Qfinder again without any problem. Just remember username /pwd would be ‘admin/ admin’ at first even after you set up your cloud account.And that’s it. It’s all up and running. I did put all my media subfolders inside Multimedia share and mapped that to a Windows network drive so that I can directly copy paste my huge music/ video/ picture library. I was so stupid to use wifi initially while copying my large media files (told you first timer :-) ) and transfer rates were at around 8-10 mb/s. Then I plugged in RJ45 right into my laptop and voila 70-90 mb/s transfer speed.I’m also using Plex. It requires you to download another additional QPKG file which you have to install by selecting ‘Manual Install’. Plex performance is good, I’m streaming to Fire Stick (1st gen) and during mp4 playback CPU usage is around 3-5% (with subtitles) and when streaming mkv files CPU usage at around 45-60% (even with subtitles and 1080p) and Ram usage below 70%. Again I’m only streaming to one device at a time so did not notice performance drop. When you start and when you fast forward, there sometimes is a buffer time of 3-5 seconds (specially from mobile devices) but that’s not bad.Also downloaded Twonky media server for my Bose SoundTouch series and everything works perfectly. All tracks/ playlists. Alos using KODI (sideloaded to Fire stick) over Wifi. It’s amazing. Can easily access all videos/ music without any problem. Also I use Music station[...] regularly from my office. It’s like my personal Spotify (without the fee of course). Mobile apps are quite decent I would say if not outstanding. I regularly use Qmusic/ Qvideo/ Qfile. Streams quite well over LTE as well. And finally Qsync works great so far, so eventually I would replace my Dropbox dependency with Qsync.Overall it’s a nice product and have so many useful features and works flawlessly.

I replaced my 10 year old NAS with this unit, and really kinda wish I had stuck with my old one. The new NAS has multiple software applications that all need to be setup, addressed, logged into. It seems like everytime you click on anything a new app pops up and you are asked to enter your password again. Settings often don't stick (so you log in the next day to find the setting you made has reverted back). Settings are repeated accross multiple software interfaces, but don't always have the same names and are inconsistently organized. The user manual is over 700 pages and yet somehow contains very little information - there is no quick start. I have it kinda working now, but am not even sure how it is working or why. After investing about 30 hours setting it up, I am going to keep it, but would certainly not reccomend it to any beginner or intermediate users.

Nas devices are more for those with slightly advanced computer skills. Tech support was very helpful!

This thing just works and is great!

Sicuramente un ottimo prodotto.Qnap sui Nas è paragonabile alla ferrari x le macchine.Ma assicuratevi che tutto funzioni correttamente.Anche ma registrazione online.Il prodotto viene ovviamente fornito senza memorie interne da acquistare separatamente.

I would give them 6 stars if I could. No issues, super fast, completely easy to use, dual ethernet ports for quick connectivity.