INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   As the popularity of NAS devices (or NAS servers as we like to call them) keeps increasing every day naturally many of you expect from us to focus in getting some of the latest models to hit the market from all the major players for testing purposes. Well lately we've seen the introduction of not only expensive models designed and manufactured by both old and new companies with business customers as their main target audience but also low and mid-end ones developed mostly for house and office use. That being said with the current state of HDD prices it really doesn't come as a surprise to see that consumers are not as interested in single bay models as they are in dual and quad ones and who can blame them since having at least one more available bay for future expansion is the obvious choice. So for the past two weeks we've been putting the latest quad bay NAS server to hit the market by QNAP the TurboNAS TS-420 through rigorous testing to see if it has what it takes to win the hearts of home and office users.

 

   QNAP Systems, Inc., as its brand promise "Quality Network Appliance Provider", aims to deliver comprehensive offerings of cutting edge network attached storage (NAS) and network video recorder (NVR) solutions featured with ease-of-use, robust operation, large storage capacity, and trustworthy reliability. QNAP integrates technologies and designs to bring forth quality products that effectively improve business efficiency on file sharing, virtualization applications, storage management and surveillance in the business environments, as well as enrich entertainment life for home users with the offering of a fun multimedia center experience. Headquartered in Taipei, QNAP delivers its solutions to the global market with nonstop innovation and passion.

 

   Much like with most home & soho oriented NAS servers the TurboNAS TS-420 does not come with stellar hardware specifications and so under its hood QNAP has placed a Marvell Kirkwood 88F6282 SoC single core CPU running at 1.6GHz along with 512MB of DDR3 memory. The CPU used is actually capable of clocks of up to 2GHz (1.6/1.8/2.0GHz) but that's also the main difference between the TS-420 and the slightly better (and more expensive) TS-421 released at around the same time. Other hardware features include two rear eSATA connectors, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 and two Gigabit Ethernet ports so as you can see although the TS-420 is a home & small office oriented model it still offers much in terms of connectivity. Now although the TurboNAS TS-420 gets shipped with the 3.8.2 firmware inside we used the latest version of the QNAP Turbo Station (4.0.2) which is quite easier to navigate compared to previous versions and also a lot better looking. Finally as usual QNAP offers quite a few Android/iOS Apps from where you can check the state of the NAS and also control many of its functions but since we've already covered them in many reviews in the past this time over we decided to skip them at least until a new feature or version comes along. So the time has come to see exactly what you can expect from the latest 4bay TurboNAS TS-420 by QNAP.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We received the TS-420 inside a large white box (white is obviously not the best for our photo bench) with a large product image at the front right beneath its main hardware specifications and above its main features/stations.

 

 

The features (usages) of the TS-420 are placed on the left side in 23 languages while right beneath them we see two small pictures of the TS-420 used to point its connectors, buttons and activity LEDs.

 

 

On the right side QNAP mentions their cloud service and their android/iOS apps.

 

 

Descriptions of the main stations and features are placed at the rear of the box.

 

 

Once you open the box you will see a thank you message from QNAP along with 2d barcodes pointing to their online social pages.

 

 

QNAP has placed the TS-420 between two thick foam spacers while the rest of the bundle with the exception of the power cable is placed inside a small cardboard box.

 

 

Although not very rich the bundle is quite sufficient and includes the TS-420, two Ethernet RJ45 cables, two small bags with mounting screws for 2.5/3.5" drives, the power cable with the power adapter and quick installation paper.

 

 

THE TURBONAS TS-420

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The TurboNAS TS-420 follows the same design as most NAS Servers by QNAP and measures 177mm in height, 180mm in width and 235mm in depth with a weight of 3kg.

 

 

On the front right side of the units body we see a perforated section.

 

 

As expected from older models the QNAP logo is placed on the upper left corner of the front fascia and further beneath it we see the power on/off button along with the one copy button placed above a USB 2.0 port.

 

 

Next to the QNAP logo there are 4 status activity LEDs (system, LAN, USB status and eSATA).

 

 

A small sticker with the HDD sequence is placed right above.

 

 

The 4 drive trays may not feature locks like the more expensive models but they are made out of aluminum and can hold both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

 

 

For a "basic" model the TS-420 certainly has an impressive number of connectors at the rear.

 

 

So from top to bottom we see the 90mm exhaust fan (41.3CFM/39.3dBA), reset switch, two eSATA ports, two Gigabit ports, two USB 3.0 ports, USB 2.0 port, DC in and finally a Kensington lock.

 

 

Because of time restrictions this is as far as we went into the interior of the TurboNAS TS-420 but at first chance we will update this section with more pictures.

 

 

SETUP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you plug the TS-420 with your router you will need to run the Qfinder program to locate it and start the installation (that's the easy way anyways).

 

 

Prior to launching the setup wizard i strongly suggest downloading the latest firmware version to your local drive from the official QNAP support page.

 

 

The setup wizard gives you two options, quick and manual setup (we always choose manual).

 

 

After that screen you will need to set a name for the server, set the administrator user name and password (if you don't like the default ones), check and adjust (need be) the network settings and finally point to the firmware update file in your local drive (if you have downloaded one). The entire setup procedure does take quite a bit to complete (approximately 30 minutes).

 

 

Once the setup is complete you can choose to take a look at the utilities made available by QNAP.

 

 

Clicking on the green button will redirect you onto the QNAP website and a list of utilities along with a short description next to them.

 

 

WEB INTERFACE PART 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the 2nd QNAP NAS Server we've used with their latest Turbo Station version (4.x.x) and i have to say that the GUI seems better and better every time. The GUI screen resembles the desktop screen of windows quite a bit and at the main tab you will find the icons of the main available/installed stations.

 

 

The new resource monitor pops out when you click on the gage placed on the lower right corner and aside looking great it informs you about the state of the HDD, system temperature, available/used resources and available free space.

 

 

As usual the heart of the QTS is the control panel and so via here you can control every single thing about the TS-420.

 

 

Through the System Settings menu you can set the name for the server, adjust time, set a password, specify your location, adjust the network IP, play around with power options, set notifications, check the state of the installed drives, create RAID and Virtual drives, enable/disable security settings, configure the speed of the fan, check hardware information, setup backup options, access external device settings, check the logs and of course perform firmware updates.

 

 

 

The Privilege Settings tab allows you to create new users and assign them to user groups, setup shared folders, set specific quotas for each user and configure domain security.

 

 

Inside the Network Services menu you will find everything network-related including FTP settings, Telnet service settings and service discovery settings. You can also setup/configure the Qsync beta application that allows you to have your files synced between the NAS and your other internet capable devices at all times.

 

 

Just like all the previous OS versions you will need to enable the installed applications prior to using them (or install more) from within the Applications tab.

 

 

WEB INTERFACE PART 2

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Photo Station has changed in the new 4.x.x firmware and now appears as a new window within the main screen. Features-wise perhaps the most important one is the GeoTagging feature but that's something that even previous versions had.

 

 

The music station also launches in the same OS window and although it looks a lot better than its predecessors it also feels lighter (resources-wise).

 

 

Moving to the Video Station from here you can upload videos to the NAS and make them available for others to see regardless of the where they are.

 

 

As always the Download Station allows you to either download torrent files or directly from HTTP/FTP.

 

 

Like the entire OS the file manager application is also quite different now and looks a lot like the Windows explorer.

 

 

The MyQPANcloud application allows you to access the NAS from anywhere around the world just as long as you have access to the internet.

 

 

Surveillance Station Pro remains pretty much the same and you can use it with a total of 42 IP cameras from a very large range of manufacturers (even if your camera is not present you can use the several compatibility modes). However by default the application comes with just the base single camera license.

 

 

The Multimedia Station can be found in the left start bar (strange that it's not available on the main screen) and although we had no problems with MOV/AVI/MP4/FLV files it's still not possible to reproduce MKV ones.

 

 

Under the My Apps tab inside the App Center you can see which applications are already installed while right beneath you can find a wide selection of available applications (however HD Video Station and XBMC are not available for non X86 CPUs).

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY – TEST RESULTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Since some of the NAS servers/devices we have tested in the past are no longer in our possession (naturally) we will keep performing the exact same testing methodology we did in the past for as long as possible in order to provide accurate comparison results. So as always we will be using a single Seagate Constellation ES.2 3TB SATA III hard disk drive with the unit at hand (just like with all of the NAS servers) and perform several upload/download tests with a single 10.9GB file. Tests are repeated a total of 4 times after which we record the average numbers (from the 4 peak ones) into our charts. Finally the network device used is the same Netgear DGN3500 Gigabit ADSL2+ Modem/Router we always use when performing tests on NAS servers.

 

FILE TRANSFER TEST

A single 10.9GB file was uploaded and downloaded to and from all the NAS units in this test. Now i can't say that we were largely impressed with the performance of the TurboNAS TS-420 but it's worth mentioning that during the transfer of 200-300MB files to the NAS it even hit 125MB/s and for quite some time but that didn't happen with really large files.

 

TEMPERATURES

As you can see the 90mm exhaust fan kept the drive quite cool and never passed 32 degrees Celsius.

 

POWER CONSUMPTION

Consumption wise the TS-420 scored just 1W less than the TS-221 probably due to the difference in CPU clocks and installed memory (as always hibernation was not enabled).

 

NOISE LEVELS

Although it happened only a couple of times the TS-420 did hit 52.4dBA while at heavy load (generally however its noise levels where between 37.2 and 44dBA).

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   There's a reason QNAP is amongst the top NAS manufacturers in the world and although the TurboNAS TS-420 is not an example of what they are capable of manufacturing in terms of performance (far from it really) still it proves that they can roll out a high quality, feature-rich yet cost-effective 4 bay NAS Server that can hold its own against similar solutions in the market. Performance aside the latest version of the QNAP Turbo Station improves on everything compared to the previous versions (prior to 4.0.0) since not only does the GUI look great but it's also a lot easier to navigate and offers more visual tools like the side resource monitor, the side start bar and the top drop down menus. True as we've mentioned in the review the TS-420 is not the perfect NAS and the two things that bothered me most was the lack of an video out (VGA/HDMI) and the fact that it can't reproduce MKV files and although the same applies with every NAS out there that doesn't have an X86/X64 compatible CPU under the hood (most can stream using the VLC plugin however and the power of your systems CPU) that doesn't change the outcome.

 

   The TurboNAS TS-420 NAS Server by QNAP currently retails for just USD429 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 330Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which lands it USD70/120Euros away (cheaper) from the slightly better TS-421 model. Overall we can say that the TurboNAS TS-420 is the ideal solution for people looking for a 4 bay NAS with plenty of features and good performance but don't want to spend much in the process. On the other hand however for people who know that they will never use more than 2 drives i strongly recommend going to the slightly cheaper (yet faster) and smaller TurboNAS TS-221 which we reviewed not too long ago since we believe that it offers a better bang for your buck. Good performance, plenty of features, great build quality and an equally good price tag are the reasons as to why we give the TurboNAS TS-420 by QNAP our Golden Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Good Performance
- Features
- 4 USB Ports (2xUSB 3.0 / 2xUSB 2.0)
- 2 eSATA Ports
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- Single/JBOD/RAID0/1/5/6/10/5+ Hot Spare Support
- QTS 4.0 OS
- IP Camera Model Support
- Android/iOS Apps
- Power Consumption
- Noise Levels
- Price (For Some) 

 

 

CONS

- No Video Output (VGA/HDMI)
- No Support For MKV File Decoding (Much Like Most NAS Servers)