QNAP HS-251: Much more than a NAS

QNAP HS-251 Personal Cloud NAS is a compact form factor, ideal to be placed in the living room also for its Home Theater PC and performance in video transcoding. And able to perform all the tasks of a NAS but thanks to XBMC gives the best just connected to the TV, as a media center.

Define QNAP HS-251 as a simple NAS would be simplistic, while it is true that the proposed QNAP fulfills perfectly even and especially in this function. Its location is ideal starting from its chassis can be either study, office, but above the living room.

This is not the same form factor of the rack, but in the end the clutter as thickness is just the same. QNAP HS-251 is a compact system which measures 30 x 22 x 4.1 cm. To about 2.6 kg weight (including discs).

We try with a pair of Western Digital WD RE4 (WD1003FBYX) from a terabyte each, the maximum capacity supported is well 8 Terabyte, not many if we thought mistakenly to choose it as the solution for office environments important.

The chassis is notable for the upper plate in brushed aluminum, which gives elegance to the system and will be used for the heat dissipation of the discs, profiles and base are made of plastic. Removed the front bezel, you have access in the simplest way possible to the hard disk precisely.

The system can be mounted both traditional disks, both SSDs, are 3.5 inches is 2.5 inches. On the rear, profile is devoted to the following interfaces: power, reset, dual USB 2.0 socket two Ethernet jacks, a Kensington lock Hdmi output for connecting to a TV, a double USB 3.0 socket and the power button.

The installation is very simple. Once you press the power button to start the configuration of the NAS, you can scan the QR Code on the quick installation guide with your smartphone, or proceed with your browser start.qnap.com starting at address. The smartphone will also probably the easiest way to interact with the device, once in the room. With a vocation so media would not be a bad idea a good remote.

From the hardware point of view QNAP HS-251 boasts an important feature. Work with a good Intel Celeron processor at 2.41 GHz dual core and also have been constructed to be used in practice only passive cooling. No fans in the middle of a movie.

From the software point of view instead of this model also confirm the presence of the excellent operating system QTS that facilitates all the functionality of a NAS which are not precluded work small office (it’s true, only two slots of disks so with all configurations raid safer), and enhance the management of multimedia content everywhere. Even remotely.

During the installation, in a network environment a bit complex procedure with QR Code ” Cloud Key ” has not helped us to detect the device (instead procedure succeeded immediately at home, without subnets) we then proceeded with the application Qfinder computer without the slightest problem.

After making the login procedures we were immediately offered a firmware update to version 4.1.1 we have made in the Build 20141101. Note that the update is made directly by the configuration of the NAS, you do not need to download first part the new version of the firmware. The procedure takes no more than twenty minutes of waiting.

Why QNAP HS-251?

What are your strengths? Clearly, this solution is fully oriented to satisfy fans of the management of media content on any device, any platform. An audience ready to enjoy photos, music, movies, clips everywhere, especially in cases where you want to offer them through your TV, where they can be easily navigated via the XBMC (Xbox Media Center).

On Nas, exploiting application’s Music Station, Photo Station are stored in content then projected on the connected TV in Hdmi. The best definition of the perfect use of QNAP HS-251 is just HybridDesk Station. It also means to integrate navigation with Chrome. Obviously in this case, it is important to use a keyboard and a mouse.

Not only that, using the DLNA server (Plex is perfect) you can send media files on PS3 and Xbox, or other devices that support DLNA and Airplay. But you can also make use of content from the mobile, leaving NAS charge of a transcoding supportable, or else you can manage in the cloud even the contents of your online storage.

Among the amenities the most interesting we tried we liked, in the family of information assets, the ability to leverage Qsync for immediate synchronization on devices authorized by us. The files that are placed in the folder Qsync are immediately available on the other devices, a perfect private cloud.

The benefits in DLNA, we were fully satisfied, as well as the possibility of transcoding of the content, which engage in a noticeable manner Cpu. In this case, we were more convinced of the offline mode (depending on the title you need), allowing verification of the work without some nasty surprises during use, as well as real-time exploits the acceleration in hardware can own thanks to the Celeron CPU.

With regard to the steps forward in relation to the solution HS-210, one cannot detect it in front of a slightly higher-energy consumption has more than doubled the download speed, and tripled in the upload (over 200 MB / s) , and in practice, there is record performance quite different.

This in theory, but in practice it is easy to reach with good disks also 60 Mbytes per second going up even if you love the risk and if you started with a configuration Raid 0. Latest notes, the latest update added the ability to exploit a notepad app and shared with the functionality of Signage Station for the best presentations of content. Signage Station is able to display according to the settings chosen by the user with iArtiste Lite content to be present, so let users view the same already a custom interface. I must say, the full satisfaction for the geeks.

Not to mention that for QTS are now available lots of interesting app to extend its use in every area: the ability to download, to those for the synchronization of storage in the cloud. Currently available integrated software for Amazon S3, but the app is also available for Azure Storage. Sin instead, you can synchronize your files with Google Drive, Dropbox, but not yet OneDrive.