CONCLUSION

   Using 2.5" drives instead of the larger 3.5" ones automatically means that you get to have a smaller enclosure (thus ideal for places where space is really limited) but that's not all since there are other benefits as well such as reduced power consumption, temperatures and noise levels thanks to the drives inside. The obvious downside of course is that currently the largest capacity 2.5" drive is 3TB so even 4 of those can give you slightly more than what a single 3.5" drive can (10TB) not to mention the cost of those 4 drives which is many times that of a single 3.5" one (especially since 2.5" drives are quite more expensive compared to 3.5" ones). With that out of the way it's clear that even two 2.5" HDDs can keep up with several 3.5" ones when used inside the powerful TurboNAS TS-453S Pro something which i really have to admit we didn't expect. Unfortunately we were unable to test the TS-453S Pro with 4 of those fast 2.5" drives by Seagate (we will try to get more soon) but even 2 were enough to max out the GbE connection so i doubt 4 would make much of a difference (in a 10GbE compatible NAS things would be different however). The QTS is as usual very good and although QNAP hasn't revamped it recently i still think that it leads the pack in terms of design with ASUSTOR following not far behind.

   High-end hardware specifications don't come cheap no matter which segment of the market we're dealing with and so we never expected the TurboNAS TS-453S Pro by QNAP to come cheap and with a current price tag of USD568 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 587Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) it certainly isn't. Of course when we look at a price we also need to look at the target audience that specific device has and the TS-453S Pro is aimed towards small businesses and enterprise users so cost is not really a bog concern especially when it delivers excellent performance at a smaller package compared to 3.5" compatible 4 bay models. Overall we have nothing but the best things to say about the TurboNAS TS-453S Pro and that's why we're happy to award it with our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Intel Celeron J1900 Quad Core CPU
- Excellent Performance
- Features
- 4GB DDR3L RAM (Expandable To 8GB)
- Temperatures / Power Consumption / Noise Levels
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 3 USB 3.0 Ports
- HDMI Output
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10/5 + Hot Spare
- SATA III (6Gb/s)
- QTS 4.x.x OS
- Size (For Some)

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- 2.5" Drives (Capacity/Price)