QNAP SilentNAS HS-251 2-Bay NAS Review

System Spec, GUI & Power Consumption

System Specification

User Interface

The welcome screen on the QNAP HS-251 includes a compilation of the photos you have stored on your NAS, giving it a more personal feel. It should be noted that these only are public marked photos shown on this page, even if it’s just local. This is a feature QNAP have started to add to their SOHO devices and something I welcome. You can further customize the page from the administration panel.

Once you have set up your device and login, you’ll be presented by the QNAP OS dashboard, something that reminds you more of a mobile app then a webpage. The administration interfaces have really come a long way over the years. You have the task bar at the top along with a notification area and shortcuts. All your installed Apps and system functions are listed in the main area below.

When you login the first time, you might be presented with a popup to update to the latest firmware. I highly recommend you do so as the first thing, and following that up with updating any applications as well. Don’t worry, you wont have to search for these updates yourself, as the NAS will give you a notification. All you need to do is confirm and accept the updates. QNAP always tries to ship their devices with the newest firmware, but as we know, the world of technology moves fast; well have more of this on the next page.

You can get a quick view of your system status and health via the charm-bar located to the bottom right of the screen. Clicking it will slide in the widget showing you everything you need to know at a quick glance. Hard drive health, over all system health, resource monitor as well as scheduled and completed tasks and the latest QNAP update news.

As for the rest of the features, there is simply too much to list and show in detail. Some of the things worth highlighting are the Torrent and Web download manager, File Station, Backup systems, Personal Cloud storage, Antivirus and a huge list of extra plugins to download and install.

Power Consumption

The QNAP HS-251 is surprising energy-efficient and barely draws any power. Under normal low-load situations, during every day normal tasks, it used around 20 watts while peeking at 37.1 during initial boot and maximum load. The sleep mode and when it’s powered down don’t show much difference, as the on-board LAN devices don’t need much extra to have their Wake-On-LAN running, it only draws another 0.1 watts.