QNAP SilentNAS HS-251 2-Bay NAS Review

HTPC Part

Even though the QNAP HS-251 isn’t the only, nor the first device with HDMI out, it is the sleekest in terms of design. NAS devices have been powerful enough for years to support this and it’s great to see more and more manufacturers including the feature.

QNAP have designed it so well, that you don’t even need a computer to configure the device and get going. You can access the setup directly from the built-in application or you could just use the google Chrome browser. OK that’s not entirely true, as you’ll have to connect and enable the HTPC part in the web-administration interface first.

To test this part of the NAS, I’ve attached my old, and retired, Logitech G19 keyboard and G500 mouse. I chose to use these two input devices as they’re both advanced feature wise and have on-board memory. Some smart-devices don’t like it very much, if you use such smart input devices on them; the QNAP HS-251 had no problem with this and accepted both instantly.

Besides the Spotify and YouTube apps seen above, it also has support for web browsing through Chrome. You could even browse your favourite technology site as seen below.

XMBC is the part most people will be interested in, as it turns the device into a well-known media player format that plays all your favourite shows and movies, as well as pictures and music you have stored on your NAS.

To test it I copied a bunch of media from my private NAS over and hit the play button. It started right away and without hiccups or lag. Many smart TV’s have a far to small CPU built-in to handle tasks like this, but not so with this QNAP HS-251. As seen below it renders the DivX video perfectly without missing or wrong pixels.