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We often associate NAS devices with home offices and small businesses, but QNAP’s TS-453mini is as much designed for the living room as the study. With a sleek, glossy black finish, compact dimensions and near-silent operation, it’s a NAS you wouldn’t mind leaving on display next to your TV.
The TS-453mini is ideally suited to the living room, too, with an HDMI video output on the back and a remote control included in the box, with all the playback controls you would need for watching video straight from the NAS.
You don’t even need a PC to set it up; after attaching a mouse and keyboard directly to the NAS you can format disks, install QNAP’s comprehensive operating system and share it to your network using your TV as a display. A QR code on the side of the unit points you to a website that downloads the latest version of the operating system automatically.
It’s easy to fit hard disks to the NAS. The four hot-swappable 3.5in drive bay caddies underneath the magnetic lid are oriented vertically to save space, and simply lift out on a quick-release hinge. You’ll need screws to fit 2.5in disks or SSDs, but 3.5in disks are held in place with tool-free fixtures. The NAS has no shortage of connections; as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports, there are two USB ports on the rear for a mouse and keyboard, two USB3 ports for webcams, printers or TV tuners, and another USB3 port on the front for quickly connecting flash drives or USB hard disks.
Once the NAS is set up on your local network, you can access the QTS desktop through a PC web browser or through your TV. The TS-453mini has its own simplified custom UI for the big screen, complete with familiar programs such as Google Chrome, Spotify, YouTube and even cult strategy game Wesnoth, although you’ll need a mouse and keyboard to use most apps effectively. The exception is Kodi, the media player that grew out of the XBMC project – it’s ideal for picking films from your collection and playing instantly, without having to stream them to a second device. Full HD videos played flawlessly, with no stutter or buffering.
Once you start digging into the QTS web interface you realise just how comprehensive it is. We had no trouble setting up file shares with access rights for individual users, with CIFS/SAMBA file services for Windows, AFP for Mac OS X, NFS for Linux and FTP for web browsers, so ensuring all devices can properly access your files.
Apps
Beyond the usual suite of photo, music and video apps, local and cloud file syncing, and automatic backup tools, there are optional apps to turn the NAS into a surveillance station for any networked IP cameras or a PVR once you’ve connected a digital TV tuner. Most of these are also available as mobile apps, letting you access your content when you’re away from home, although frustratingly the Qvideo, Qphoto and Qdownload apps aren’t yet available for iOS.
There are far more business-focused applications and settings here than you’ll find in a Synology DiskStation, including the ability to run digital signage straight from the NAS. You can even run virtual instances of Windows, Linux or Android, turning the NAS into a basic PC while retaining its storage capabilities.
Specs and benchmarks
This is made possible by the 2GHz quad-core Intel Celeron CPU and 2GB of RAM, which makes the TS-453mini one of the most powerful consumer NAS devices we’ve ever seen. You can even upgrade the RAM by lifting the slot on the bottom of the NAS, letting you replace the 2GB SO-DIMM with up to 8GB of DDR3 if you plan on making liberal use of virtual machines. We had no problem installing and running Ubuntu 15.04 on the NAS in a virtual machine, despite this version not being listed in the NAS interface’s virtual machine setup wizard.
The powerful processor also helps when it comes to file transfer speeds. With four 3TB Western Digital Red disks installed in a RAID 5 array, our large files test was written at a rapid 106.4MB/s and read at an outstanding 111.3MB/s. The small files test is always slower, but 20.6MB/s writes and 22.5MB/s reads are still very respectable – as were 113.2MB/s writes and 87.4MB/s reads in our 1GB massive files test. It outpaces all other four-bay NAS devices we’ve seen in the past twelve months.
Conclusion
The TS-453mini is a brilliant four-bay NAS; it’s compact and barely makes a sound, yet is powerful and has one of the most comprehensive NAS operating systems we’ve seen. It might not be as user-friendly as Synology’s DSM OS, but the integrated media player software and HDMI port on the back make it a fantastic addition to your home cinema. It’s perfectly at home in an office environment too, but our big concern is the price. At roughly £470 as an empty enclosure, it could cost between £800 and £1,300 to fill the TS-453mini with four 3TB, 4TB or 6TB disks. With Synology’s excellent DS415Play costing around £100 less, you would need to use the QNAP’s extra features in order to justify the higher price.
