CONCLUSION

   The brand new TurboNAS TS-1635 may not be among the most powerful NAS models to ever reach our lab but since it has no HDMI output and thus can’t be used as a media server (at least not the same way as other models) the Annapurna AL-514 quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU is more than enough (you can see that from out tests) for what it was designed to do. Also thanks to its 16 drive bays I reckon it will be a while before anyone requires more storage space and I say that because I know quite a few professionals in the video/movie industry that wouldn’t even be able to fill it with drives, at least not at home or at the office. Of course if that need ever arises you can get up to 8 extra drive bays by adding the UX-800P expansion model available by QNAP. Now things get somewhat tricky when it comes to its 10GbE connectivity since if you want the best possible performance the built-in SFP+ ports supported by the Annapurna CPU are simply put not quite as fast as the LAN-10G2T-U PCIe card which we’ve used with other models (it may be the CPU’s fault but I somehow doubt it). Unfortunately although the TurboNAS TS-1635 does have a PCIe x2 slot it’s not compatible with the LAN-10GT2T-U model so you may have to wait a bit until QNAP dishes out something better and compatible. Noise levels may also not be the lowest we’ve ever recorded nor is its power consumption but let’s not forget that this is a 16 bay model so obviously it’s not ment for home use, at least not primarily. As for the new QTS version 4.3.2 well it looks better and seems more focused in providing extra options to users but as expected really it offers little more compared to the previous one. Finally regarding the SSD cache feature which we've been using quite a lot lately once again it seems it doesn’t add much (or at all) in terms of read and write performance but it does make the OS run smoother.

   When you’re testing a 16 bay NAS server aimed primarily towards professionals you know it’s not going to be cheap and it’s really not since the TurboNAS TS-1635-8G currently retails for USD1249 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 1361.86Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de). On the bright side thanks to the Annapurna Labs CPU and the lack of an HDMI port cost is nowhere near what you’d have to pay even for the 6 bay TVS-682-8G and ontop of that you’re also getting two 10GbE ports so at the end of the day noone here believes that the TS-1635 is priced badly which is why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Annapurna Labs AL-514 Quad Core CPU
- Very Good Performance
- 16 SATA III Bays (6Gb/s)
- Built In 10GbE SFP+ Ports
- 8GB DDR3L RAM (Expandable To 16GB)
- Power Consumption
- PCIe Gen2x2 Slot
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports (Support Link Aggregation)
- 3 USB 3.0 Ports
- SSD Cache
- Built In Speaker (Audible Warnings)
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10 + hot spare
- QTS 4.3.2 OS

CONS

- No HDMI Output
- PCIe Slot x2 (Compatibility with 10GbE cards)
- Annapurna Labs CPU (Compared To Intel and AMD Models)
- Noise Levels