Home iOS AppleTV ,,,,,QNAP TS-453B is a medium-format NAS designed for the office, in the ideas of those who write from 4 to 10 users, but also for those who work at home or even for a whole series of advanced consumer users who now need a center of calculation in the living room that archives photos, videos, data and that offers some basic services, to be recalled if necessary.
The TS-453B meets all these needs in an excellent way, on the one hand with an attractive look that definitively retires the idea that servers are bad things to hide in the closet, on the other with a power and versatility capable of reach many operational areas.
We have been pleasantly putting it under pressure for a few weeks, using it as a computing center for the office and home, also taking into account the new privacy regulations to which a NAS fully responds.
TS-453B, the review
Design
Accustomed to office models that usually feature the classic front drawers and other more consumer ones with a more beautiful but more uncomfortable cover, this TS-453B surprised us for the simple and ingenious idea of placing a semi-transparent plastic front cover, easily exportable that covers the drawers, which remain so comfortable to use but hidden when not needed.
Just above the cover there is a small LED display that normally reports the status of the NAS and the IP, convenient during installation in complex networks: the display is beautiful and bright, but perhaps a little too small and above all we would have liked (but maybe in the future it will come) a way to customize it via software: the buttons to switch the display are there (useful for example the temperature mode) but it would have been nice to be able to decide everything from QTS, option that if there is, we have not found it.
On the side of the front panel there is a USB-A and a USB-C connector, convenient for connecting various types of disks, which especially just after the initial configuration are very useful for the initial passage of data (without clogging the network). In addition, an SD card reader (which becomes increasingly important for those with new MacBook Pros, with only USB-C ports).
In the rear there is the large fan, four more USB-A ports, two HDMI ports and two Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus other audio inputs and outputs.
Basically an important firepower, considering that the front USB ports are perfectly capable of charging a smartphone and that the HDMI ports can drive a 4K TV, thus acting as a multimedia center for the office and home (although, like we will see, for this sector there is more).
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The front, with the USB connections. USB-C and SD 
Installation
Installation is easy: the 3.5 “discs fit into the four drawers without screws, thanks to a system of forks that allow the disc to be inserted and locked without moving parts.
The lack of screws is objectively a point in favor, because usually these are lost when not in use (but why does no one make drawers in the NAS?) However the first few times inserting and removing the disk is an unintuitive operation, at least until you understand the correct movement in the insertion.
Otherwise, to install 2.5 “SSD disks, for which a special sled is not required, it is necessary to use the screws supplied in the box.
Once the hardware part is finished, the software part is even easier: we can start through the Qfinder Pro App (here the download link) which performs the first operations, then moving on to the more detailed steps directly via the web, or starting directly from the browser knowing the IP of the NAS (as we did, using the basic but functional My Net, link here).
For the use of disks, various RAID configurations are possible, among which the use of one or more SSD units as cache is also interesting, to substantially speed up many of the most common operations, among which we mention virtualization.
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Discs
The TS-453B came directly from QNAP without any disks, a fairly common situation for this model: we used a RAID 1 system (mirror) with two 6TB disks (found here), a single 12 disk. TB and a 480 GB SSD in the last free slot. While the 6TB drives had already been used in other tests, Seagate's 12TB Iron Wolf drive (here on Amazon) was featured here for the first time. Aside from the initial reverence of having so much space in one hand, weighing just over 6TB, the drive performed excellently, with a noise level entirely identical to the smaller siblings (Seagate inserts an anti-vibration system in all Iron Wolf disks starting from 4 TB). We emphasize that the importance of purchasing disks for NAS is not secondary: factors such as noise, speed and the ability to remain active 24/24 and 7/7 are fundamental, while using other types of disks you risk lower performance or percentages. of breaking much greater. As for the SSD, we opted for a 480 GB Kingston DC400 model (which you can find here), which is very fast and perfectly comfortable as a cache unit: obviously we could have also inserted the SSD as an active disk, but in our opinion it would have been redundant and out of target for the market for which this model is intended.
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Options
The TS-453B model includes a PCIe port on the back which, when enabled, can accommodate an M.2 SSD, a network card with 10GbE connectivity, a compatible PCIe wireless adapter or a 10Gbps USB 3.1 card.
Obviously the capacity of this NAS can also be expanded externally using one of the USB-A ports or the USB-C port and connected a normal mechanical disk among those on the market, the operating system is perfectly able to read discs in EXT3 format. , EXT4, FAT32, NTFS and even HFS +, typical of macOS.
A copy of Linux, virtualized here inside the TS-453B
QTS
Once you have inserted the disks and turned on the NAS, you are in front of the operating system, entirely piloted via the browser, even if through the two HDMI ports we can connect a display, keyboard and mouse to use the NAS as a small PC. The writer has tried dozens of NAS, but it must be admitted that the environment that provides the QTS operating system is done very well.
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The QTS home page 
A text editor, an App available in the QTS App Store 
The preview of a movie, directly from inside QTS 
the App Store 
The interface is certainly modern and intuitive, the controls are all just a click away and the App Store is really well stocked. There are apps for practically everything: some that allow the use of an office via browser, others for web development, some for email control and others for data synchronization with the most popular cloud services. There is no shortage of Apps to manage cameras via IP, a function that has now become pivotal in this market and also those for the virtualization of different OS, which we immediately used to create an instance of Linux.
Plex, installed here on TS-453B
Finally, the multimedia part: QNAP provides several Apps that manage films, TV series, private movies and photographs, also providing the compendium for Apple TV, although we took advantage and immediately installed Plex. The difference between Plex and the QNAP Apps has proved not that large anyway, and considering that Plex still has a paid part, QNAP is to be commended for the effort put into its users.
Even the cloud part, which can be managed by QTS to reach the NAS when you are outside a network that does not have a fixed IP (or the NAS is not configured to exit), appears to be very complete, but perhaps in this case not very intuitive. The various levels of interfacing with the NAS from the outside are very different than from the inside and some things cannot be done, even if the essential ones, such as managing files and services, remain active.
Mobile control from the mobile App, here on an iPhone
Different speech for the mobile apps: in particular for what concerns Qfile and QManager, which are the most important: Qfile has everything it needs to do, without hesitation or inaccuracies, but to tell the truth, considering the average quality of QTS we would be there. expect more courage in the interface. QManager, on the other hand, is excellent, even if at times a bit distracting.
The internal processor, an Intel Celeron J3455 quad-core at 1.5 GHz, allows you to virtualize various instances of operating systems, from Windows (from XP onwards) to the various Linux distros, up to macOS.
An error mail arrived immediately, while we were trying some configurations
Considerations
The TS-453B is, ultimately, an excellent NAS: compact, quiet, powerful and versatile, suitable as we have said for a small office as well as perfect for the advanced user who wants an advanced system at home.
At the hardware level it is really difficult to find a fault in it, at the software level the excellence of QTS is felt without perplexity, and if some details here and there can be improved, it does not affect the prestige of a model destined for large numbers.
Users can find TS-453B (here the link to the product sheet) in the chains authorized by QNAP, or directly online in the versions with 4 GB of RAM or with 8 GB of RAM.
During this review, we used Seagate 12TB and 6TB IronWolf Series NAS drives and Kingston DC400 480GB SSDs.
Pro • Design suitable for the office and the living room • Power and versatility • Quiet • QTS is a certainty
Against • The absence of screws is a plus, but the coupling mechanism needs improvement
Price: 633.00 Euro (without disks, model with 4GB of RAM), Seagate IronWolf 12 TB approximately 390 Euro, Seagate IronWolf 6 TB approximately 150 Euro and Kingston DC400 480 SSD GB about 230 Euro.
Accessories: QM2-2P Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 145,18 Euro QM2-2S10G1T Dual M.2 22110/2280 SATA SSD and single-port (10GBASE-T) 10GbE expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full- height are bundled 279,38 Euro QM2-2P10G1T Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD and single-port (10GBASE-T) 10GbE expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full -height are bundled 267,18 Euro QM2-2S-220A Dual M.2 22110/2280 SATA SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x2, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 108,58 Euro QM2-2P-244A Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 145,18 Euro QM2-2P-344 Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 218,38 Euro QM2-2P-384 Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x8, low-profile bracket pre -loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 242,78 Euro QWA-AC2600 AC2600 Wireless Dual Band PCIe expansion card 176,9 Euro QXG-10G1T Single-port (10GBASE-T) 10GbE network expansion card, Aquantia AQ107, PCIe Gen3 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 108,58 Euro LAN-10G2T-X550 Dual-port (10GBASE-T) 10GbE network expansion card, Intel X550, PCIe Gen3 x4, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 425,78 Euro LAN-10G2SF-MLX Dual-port (SFP +) 10GbE network expansion card, Mellanox ConnectX®-3 Pro , PCIe Gen3 x8, low-profile bracket pre-loaded, low-profile flat and Full-height are bundled 279,38 Euro
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