QNAP SilentNAS HS-251 2-Bay NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The price is a major factor in the SOHO market, as I’m sure you can imagine and it’s something that can make or break the decision to buy a particular system. Priced at around $540-600 through Newegg, Amazon.com and TigerDirect in the US and around £400 in the UK through Scan and Amazon.co.uk, the HS-251 is one of the pricier ones, but this is a premium device with premium functions, so it’s only fair that it has a premium price. You can get the HS-251 pre-furnished with NAS drives from Western Digital or Seagate as well. At the time of writing they feature from 1 to 4TB per drive bay with a varying price.

Overview

We have to give a lot of credit to QNAP for their design on the HS-251, the simplistic design with aluminium top and black plastic make this device a great match for your living room and home-theatre set-up. It doesn’t matter if you would like to place it on top of your receiver, set-top box or just seat it below or next to your TV, it will blend in well. The software side is amazing too and you have almost any feature you can think of built-in right out of the box. If that still isn’t enough for you, there is a really long list of additional plugins that can be installed.

One thing that I would like to point out here is that the QNAP HS-251 does run quite hot, and shouldn’t be placed in a closed spaces. The totally passive design makes the components run slightly above 50 degrees. Placing my hand on top of the device is hot, but not so hot that I have remove my hand before I chose to; this is all within the tolerance of the hardware, but it could end up in reduced lifespan.

The totally silent part is something that is true, as there isn’t a single thing that can make noise. The only noise you’ll hear is the light buzzing from your hard drives when they are being accessed. The case is so well shielded that I only heard our WD RED NAS drives when paying close attention at night when everything else was muted. The performance is also great on this system and I didn’t experience any bottlenecks or lags across any of my tests. Even when running the XMBC application on the device itself and playing movies stored on the NAS via LAN on multiple devices.

There are however a couple of things I’d recommend QNAP to change in their next revision of this device. The location of the USB ports on the back isn’t the best place. While I think they should stay there, 1 of each type should be placed on the front for easy access. I also did miss the card reader a bit; a great feature the HS-210 had, the little brother to the HS-251. It would have been great if they had added a couple tiny fans inside to create a minimal airflow, of course with the option to turn them off by the user.

The included screws, the ones needed to mount your hard drives, are not default sized drive screws. The extra flat head allows QNAP to save a couple of millimetres in height, but it could turn into a problem for the end-user if he happens to lose one of more of them.

Pros:

• Slim design to fit in with other home cinema devices
• Magnetic front cover to hide drive bays
• Friendly user interface
• Direct HDMI output with HTPC features
• Noise-less
• Great performance

Cons:

• System runs a bit too hot for my liking
• USB ports not easy to access

Neutral:

• No card reader
• Price-tag might be a bit to high for most people
• Screws are not default-sized

“QNAP’s SilentNAS HS-251 is a great concept that allows the user to directly incorporate the NAS into their home entertainment system. The added benefit of acting like a HTPC justifies the position and works like a charm. Offering more performance than needed combined with the amount of features included, this is a must have if you can afford it.”

Thanks to QNAP for providing us with this review sample.