QNAP TVS-871

Best NAS units, by AnandTech

In its network-attached storage guide, AnandTech presents “suitable options for 2-, 4- and 8-bay NAS units targeting the home consumer/SOHO market”. “One important aspect here is that we are not going to talk about the high-end SMB market or the multitude of offerings that come with Windows Storage Server or some similar flavour,” notes the website. “Only products based on custom OSes are being considered in this guide.”

These are the best NAS units on the market according to AnandTech.


Western Digital My Cloud EX 2 Ultra

2-bay unit
“Western Digital is obviously a big vendor with end-user support appropriate even for non-tech savvy folks. Coupled with the plug-and-play experience, this makes it an ideal purchase for anyone who is looking to get started with network attached storage and needs basic data protection”

Synology DS216

2-bay unit
“Power users wanting to experiment with btrfs and needing a more full-featured COTS NAS OS need to look no further than Synology’s DSM 6.0”

ZyXEL NAS540

4-bay unit
“The main attraction here is the price – $220 for four bays is approximately the same as what the [LenovoEMC] ix4-300d used to cost when it was in the market. However, the NAS540 has double the RAM (1GB DDR3) of the ix4-300d. It also supports hot-swapping of the drives, unlike the ix4-300d”

QNAP TS-453A

4-bay unit
“QNAP’s QTS is very rich in features (both mobile apps and the NAS apps ecosystem), and is perfect for power users”

QNAP TVS-871-i7-16G

8-bay unit
“The TVS-x71 units are meant for the high-end SMB market, but, in our evaluation of a TVS-871T-i7-16G unit over the last several months …, we can say that it is positively drool-worthy for the high-end power users with cash to burn”

Netgear ReadyNAS RN214

4-bay unit (honourable mention)
“Coupled with the newly introduced Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 tri-band 4×4 802.11ac router and the promise of plug-and-play link aggregation support, it presents a compelling solution for consumers in the market for a router as well as a NAS”


AnandTech is a technology website focused on hardware. It was founded in 1997 by Anand Lal Shumpi, who served as its CEO and editor-in-chief until 2014, when he left the company to work at Apple. Praised for its in-depth reviews, the website is a reliable and influential source of information for technology enthusiasts.

Source: AnandTech
Last checked on: 2 May 2016
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