QNAP TS-253A-4G 2 Bay NAS Enclosure with 4GB RAM - Black (GDPR Compliant)

A few years ago I bought a Synology NAS, which I updated to an Asustor NAS a year later. Each time I outgrew the NAS and needed more power. This time I decided to make a bigger jump and settled on the QNAP TS-453A for its speed and versatility.This NAS contains an Intel Celeron Quad Core processor which is fully 64-bit and capable of transcoding video right up to 4K. The supplied RAM is 4GB which is a little tight for video processing but fine for general storage functions. If like me, you like having a lot of different services running the 4GB can be a bit limiting. So I upgraded straight away to 16GB of RAM. I know the manufacturer states a maximum of 8GB, I can assure you that 16GB works fine. Check out https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007B5S52C for a suitable upgrade kit that I used.I used a 256GB SSD, 6TB HDD, 4TB HDD and a 2TB HDD. I set them all up as single drives as I don’t need RAID protection. The SSD was used in the first drive slot as I wanted to keep the system information on the fastest drive and also save on power consumption as I leave it on 24 hours a day. Now I have enough storage to last me a while and all running at high speed.The selection of software available for the QNAP is a bit more limited than I found with the Asustor and the Synology. This is mainly because QNAP will not publish software that involves anything of the more questionable uses such as torrents and such like. However, a quick look on the internet and I found loads of packages available from 3rd parties. Just search for ‘qpkg’ to find them. They are all easy to install.I haven’t tried a lot of stuff yet but everything I have tried has worked flawlessly. The one criticism I’ve found is that it’s not easy to move one shared folder to another drive on the system. This really needs to be addressed because the included File Station is very good otherwise. The App Center is great and allows 3rd party app repositories to be added to it.I found the LCD display useful on the front of the unit. It displays messages when something needs your attention otherwise it switches off to save power. There is a menu system on it but it’s not that useful.Performance wise, as a file server, it really depends on your setup and the limits imposed by your network but for me it’s the fastest file server I’ve ever used. As a media server it really rockets and I’ve had it transcoding video, via Plex, to three separate clients at the same time and there were no dropouts at all. Of course, you’re not limited to these and many uses such as cloud services, web servers, mail servers, etc., are all available. As I said earlier, there is a mass of software packages available for it, you only need to look.At £369.99 that I paid for it is not cheap but I’m happy that I have bought a quality and versatile NAS. If any of the above means anything to you, don’t waste your time buying underpowered systems, save your money for this one. I’m sure you won’t regret it. I’m not.I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.

The amount of features is astounding. I pretty much bought it just for the DVR/CCTV functionality and the occasional video streaming, but its very smart...Initial setup--------------------------------------------It could just be me, but I found setting up disks was a little clunky. I wanted to keep seperate disks/volumes for CCTV recordings, and movie/tv show storage. I managed to do it, but I found it a little trickier than I thought. I only have 2 disks installed at the moment, but hope to add more which seems to be possible, as well as allowing me to setup the new disks in a RAID array.If don't want to segregate your disks, the initial setup would be pretty straight forward.CCTV / DVR--------------------------------------------Simple setup - very easy to get the cameras setup and recording. Slightly trickier to setup motion alerts and motion recording (I'm only interested in the former). I've only tried to setup motion triggers once (where I will receive an email with a video clip if motion is triggered) but had limited success (I received alerts every minute from movement outside of the motion activated areas I had specified). But I think this may be more to do with the HIKVISION camera software, not the NAS.You can view camera's live remotely using the VMobile android app, including sound. Although I find the aspect ratio is a little skewed, and I can't view recordings in HD via the player, I have to drop down the quality before i can view anything.I can, however, access all of the recordings remotely using the QFile app and view everything in full resolution. The NAS also organises the recordings very well by default (folders per day, sub folders by hour etc).Video Streaming--------------------------------------------Excellent performance. I can stream 1080p video without issue both on the LAN or remotely only my phone without any buffering or lag. Its very very good. I stream movies/TV shows to the smart TVs in the house. It works very well with a Raspberry Pi or with LGs WebOS 3.0.It also has a built in download client which you can control via the QGet android app. Just kick off a bittorrent download and the NAS will do all the heavy lifting. No need to keep a PC on and then transfer it to the NAS later, the NAS will do it all directlyRemote access--------------------------------------------If you setup remote access, beware, I have setup logging for warnings and I get the odd alert for failed logins where someone has accidentally or intentionally tried to access my NAS remotely. Make sure you setup a very secure password for the admin account.Remote access in itself is very good, the web interface is great and lets you manage the NAS remotely in the same way you would fromRemote file access via the android app is very smooth, and I can stream a 1080p video on my phone via 4G without any lag or buffering. Obviously depending on your broadband connection (we use Fibre and I manage to reach upto 10-12mb upload speeds with 50mbs download)HDMI output--------------------------------------------Major down side imo - it does not support CEC. So you need to use the QRemote app via your phone if your NAS is hidden away , or an Infra red repeater to allow the remote to work. It won't work with your TV remote (something you can easily with a Raspberry Pi, for example).I can't comment massively on using the HDMI output because I run a HDMI lead that is 10m+ and this seems to cause some issues with video sometimes cutting out as well as some visible 'tearing' in the image. Its worsened if I increase the resolution to 4k. For now I run the output as 1x 1080p only (I will use the second output at a later date to mirror the image on another TV) with the surveillance station constantly running and it seems stable.Very good if you want to quickly switch your TV over to the HDMI input and view the cameras around your house.Backup----------------------------------------------------Although I've not had time to set things up, I like the idea of real time back up, especially for the CCTV footage. If someone was to break in, your recordings will become useless if they manage to locate and steal your NAS! So I like that I can back up in real time to a USB HDD that can be hidden away remotely, or even for the NAS to replicate to another remote NAS in real time!!Also very handy if you use the NAS for private cloud.Virtual Switch--------------------------------------------Again, a feature I have not tried, but the BT Home hub does not allow for guest mode, so I plan to setup an isolated 'guest' VLAN and plugin a spare WLAN router I have lying around to prevent guests from accessing my files. I'm not sure it can be done yet, but I've no reason to see why not :) Although to be fair, to access the files you need to authenticate to the NAS with a user account in the first place.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I've knocked off a star simply because of the lack of CEC remote compatibility, slightly tricky HDD setup and minor issues with the Vmobile apps poor recording playback. Also, the real-time transcoding is not very good - the video is virtually un-watchable imo as it seems to drop the framerate to something ridiculously (maybe this can be tweaked somewhere, but I can't see where). However, viewing in the original resolution seems perfectly fine, so I've found no reason to use the realtime transcoding :)