CONCLUSION

   When QNAP told us they were working on a silent passively cooled NAS we were all intrigued although i have to admit that i was a bit more excited than everyone else since i always wanted to have a NAS server inside my living room right beneath my 55 inch TV set. The only two questions i had back then was the how good the HS-210 would be in terms appearance and performance and in both aspects i wasn't disappointed since on one hand it looks like a small DVD player while on the other it managed to get really close to the AS-202TE by ASUSTOR a dual bay actively cooled NAS server. In the end however that mattered very little because QNAP made a single and in my honest opinion unjustifiable mistake (one that i still can't figure out) they didn't add an HDMI video/audio output. Now normally HDMI wouldn't matter very much since i know many people who have virtually no use for one but when you launch a product aimed towards home users and you promote its design and passive cooling by saying that people can place it beneath TV sets inside their living rooms and bedrooms it makes no sense for it to lack an HDMI output. Of course the single core 1.6GHz CPU by Marvell may not be powerful enough to playback heavy media files or perhaps the passive cooling isn't strong enough for that use but regardless of the why QNAP chose that path we all think it's wrong and we hope that they will resolve this in an upcoming revision or a entirely new model. Another problem is the high temperatures of the drives inside and although at 55 degrees Celsius there's little reason to panic still during the summer that number will probably increase and that just might be reason enough for some people to look somewhere else.

   QNAP obviously spend quite a bit of time designing the SilentNAS HS-210 to overcome the passive cooling issue and since there's nothing currently in the market with similar features and design it doesn't really come as a surprise that it currently retails for USD287.97 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 292Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). The problem with that price tag however is that there are quite a few dual-bay models which are overall better at around the same price point like the TurboNAS TS-221 (no HDMI) again by QNAP or even the AS-202TE by ASUSTOR. Definitely however QNAP deserves credit both for their innovation since that might be the beginning of something really unique (SilentNAS series) and the good performance levels for a passively cooled NAS server and that's why we are awarding the SilentNAS HS-210 with our Golden Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Good Performance
- Design (Set Top Design)
- Passive Cooling (Silent)
- 4 USB Ports (2xUSB 3.0 / 2xUSB 2.0)
- Single/JBOD/RAID0/1 Support
- QTS 4.1.0 OS
- IP Camera Support
- Android/iOS Apps
- SD Card Slot

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Temperatures
- No HDMI Output