The Verdict
We are certainly impressed with the QNAP TS-439 Turbo NAS unit. Next to an elegant and stylish design, it is just loaded with features. I have barely touched and shown the surface of all it's features. In fact there are so many features that it might be nearly overwhelming for some of you.
Class act are power consumption, hot-swappable drives. Then ease of configurations is a huge 'prep' as the device is just really user friendly to use and operate. You configure it once, and you are good to go. That is the reality of the device. In the same line of user friendliness we have to applaud the user interface, managed with your browser. It just does not get any simpler than that.
Of course a really nice feature of the device is the fact that you can setup your drives in a whole lot of variety. Simply single disk, or go wicked with several RAID modes, mirror, stripe, RAID5, RAID 6 .. do what you like. Again all managed from that easy to use interface. RAID 5 and 6 would be a the better choice for end-users, redundancy of data. That comes at a cost to available disk space, but if a single drive fails in RAID 5 you will not lose data, in RAID 6 you can fail two drives and still retain all of your data while having nice performance.
Then there's the little extra's like the webserver, if you want it can hold Joomla preinstalled for you. If not, just install whatever you like, you have an embedded Apache, PHP and a MySQL server at your disposal as well. Of course there are limits to that. With FreeBSD for example you choose your ports and thus which versions of software you want installed whereas the latest firmware for the QNAP device will always carry a fixed update, PHP 5.2.9 in the latest firmware. But this device is not intended as a real hardcore HTTP server anyway. The browser menu is very limited on configuration. Of course you can SSH your way in though and manually configure though.
On that topic, if you SSH your way in, you will notice it is based off their own Linux port / distribution. That Linix distro is stored on the units 128MB NAND flash unit (solid state disk).
A quick DMESG does not reveal any real info on the Linux build. But whatever really. Using Linux is a good stable and save call. it's however also a restriction for those of you used to configuring based on a windows environment. Then again the webserver related features are limited anyway, but good enough for something simple.
Flexible and versatile are the two main words that come to mind. In this review we tried to show you the more prominent features of the device, and our feelings towards it. As such we liked it very much really. Flexibility as in any platform (Mac/Windows/Linux) you can use this device in an easy to operate manner. Versatile as in the heaps of features this little NAS unit offers.
Of course all the features in the world can not hide the fact that the essence of the product has to be .. a file storage unit. And there the product just shines in terms of flexibility and performance.
The one downside to the QNAP TS-439 Turbo NAS unit is it's price. Expect to lay down 750 EUR ~ 800 USD for this fine piece of machinery. In fact we spotted it at Newegg for $799.99.
For regular consumers and end-users that's just completely out of budget, but for small office home office situations, it might just be what the doctor ordered. We certainly liked it and in a SOHO situation we think that money is just well invested.
This was our first hands-on experience with a QNAP product, and we like what we see. This absolutely is well though through and quality build gear. You guys will be hearing a lot more from them, that's a guarantee.
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