CONCLUSION

   I don't really need to point out that we were all impressed with the performance of the HS-251 since that's very easy to see just by taking a quick look at our charts. Actually i was more than just surprised since i never expected a passive cooling solution to match and even surpass in some areas its more expensive brother which also uses active cooling (the TS-451 in this case). Overall in terms of performance the SilentNAS HS-251 does extremely well and should cover even the most demanding consumers. Power consumption was also very low and as a matter of fact identical to that of the HS-210 something which was quite strange (strange but a welcome result). The only problem we came across with the SilentNAS HS-251 also happens to be its primary selling point and that's the passive cooling system since it may work as advertised but i wouldn't recommend using this NAS 24/7 (unless temperatures in the room are very low) as i wouldn't recommend using enterprise grade drives like the ones we do for our tests. WD Red drives may not be as fast but because of that they don't build up as much temperature, they are quieter and they have reduced electrical requirements.

   Mid-End NAS Servers may offer very good performance levels with a wealth of features but at a cost and so the new SilentNAS HS-251 with its current price tag of USD420 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 463.66Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) doesn't come cheap. However you all see what it's capable of and what it can offer so we don't think QNAP is asking for much. I would of course like them to go back to the drawing board to redesign the enclosure used in the SilentNAS series and perhaps equip it with several heatsinks inside to absorb temperature from both the system components and the HDDs (would increase size a bit but i doubt people would mind) but even so the HS-251 is ideal for home use as is. Performance, features, zero noise (coming from the NAS not the drives) and size are the things in which the SilentNAS HS-251 excels at and because of them it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Intel Celeron J1800 Dual Core CPU
- Excellent Performance
- Design (Set Top Design)
- Passive Cooling (Silent)
- Features
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 4 USB Ports (2xUSB 3.0 / 2xUSB 2.0)
- Dual HDMI v1.4a Output
- RAID 0/1
- SATA III (6Gb/s)
- QTS 4.x.x OS

CONS

- HDD Temperatures
- Price (For Some)