Storage

QNAP HS-264 NAS – Review

Here we have talked a lot about NAS, a tool that we believe is essential today. But many see it as just a big hard drive that won't move and can be accessed from the network or online. Although it is true, it is also true that the domestic market sees NAS as something expensive, that it is easily replaceable by an external hard drive, and that the functionalities are not entirely useful. For that market there is the QNAP HS-264, a NAS that highlights its use as a multimedia center centralized in the home, and being especially quiet for offices.

We thank QNAP for giving us the material for review

Unboxing

The box, as we are used to receiving QNAP material. Although it is in English, the type of NAS is seen, with its main properties such as cores, RAM and that it has native HDMI outputs.

It should be said that, although it is sold as silent, to enjoy the silence it is necessary to use SSDs, since the nature of the moving parts of hard drives will generate noise. It's not loud enough to be annoying, because you can even take a nap in the same room.

In the box you can not miss the accessories such as information pamphlets, warranty, connectivity cables and more so that right out of the box, we have everything ready to mount the NAS by following the official QNAP tutorials.

From a personal case, installing a domestic NAS is not as complicated as it seems. It is simply to connect the NAS to power, and through the Ethernet cable to a LAN port of the router, and then follow the QNAP tutorials that it has on its YouTube channel. Of course, we must remember that with this, we are only buying the NAS, not storage, which is an added expense that few people take into account.


Design

First of all, what stands out the most about this NAS design is that hides very well that it is a NAS. It maintains the visual and rectangular style of the stream box, or DTT tuners. Now that on-demand content is taking more and more, although this HS-264 does not seek to be where you tune in to Netflix, it can be an accompaniment to take advantage of the other HDMI ports on the television in the living room.

Its small size means that it can only house two storage units. This greatly reduces overall capabilities. It only leaves us configuration options JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1, although the latter takes away half of the storage in a system that already has it very limited due to its nature.

Like any other QNAP NAS, installing storage units is easy. The caddy is removed from the bay, the pressure and stability mounts are removed from the caddy, the disc is bolted on, the stabilizers are put back on, and the caddy is placed in the original bay. It seems complicated, but it is the usual simple process for domestic NAS, and it is explained in the instructions that come standard.

Much of the reason this is a quiet NAS is that it has a large passive heatsink and large ventilation slits on the bottom.

The stops are thick and made of rubber, quite ideal if they are going to move little and thus they will not wear out much. They leave enough space for the heat from the sink to flow.

In addition to the usual RJ45 and USB ports for data connection, we have two HDMI 2.1 ports. This allows us to connect it to the television. Thus, we easily have a content player that we download from the internet.

With this, We easily have a multimedia content player in the living room, with large storage, and that we can fill from a separate computer. After the initial configuration, which is as easy as reading the steps they tell us, and configuring the RAID or JBOD, we have a small entertainment device. Thus, with the apps from the QNAP store, we can download series and movies to have them locally, and thus not depend on other people's servers. Although there are official content streaming services, many times we find that they remove content that we want to see and we have no legal options, so resorting to these other methods becomes the best way to make sure you have a movie, in high constant quality, and knowing that you are not going to lose it in a few years due to license problems or because support has deteriorated.

Opening it up and looking inside, we see how extremely simple the HS-264 is. For the most storage experts and who want a more complex device. It has soldered RAM so it cannot be expanded with larger modules, nor does it have a slot for M.2 SSD to use SSD cache.

It is something tremendously simple, and limited, for home users. You can give it to a relative and take care of the installation, and teach him how to use it, and thus he will have a way of watching the movies and series that he downloads, in addition to having a fixed space in which to keep important documents and other files.


QNAP HS-264 NAS Features

  • Quad-core, four-thread Intel Celeron N5105 CPU, clocking up to 2,9 GHz.
  • 86-bit x64 CPU architecture
  • Intel UHD Graphics graphics processors
  • Floating point unit
  • Encryption Engine (AES-NI)
  • Hardware accelerated transcoding
  • 8 GB expandable system memory
  • 4 GB flash memory for dual-boot operating system protection.
  • Drive Bay 2 x 3,5″ SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s drives
  • Support for 3,5″ SATA hard drives, 2,5″ SATA hard drives, and 2,5″ SATA solid state drives.
  • Hot swappable.
  • SSD cache acceleration support.
  • 2,5GbE (2,5G/1G/100M) port 2 (2,5G/1G/100M/10M).
  • Wake-on-LAN (WOL).
  • JumboFrame.
  • USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) port 2 Type-A ports.
  • IR sensor (RM-IR004).
  • 2 HDMI 2.0 ports for resolution up to 3840 x 2160 @ 60Hz.
  • Dimensions: 41,3 × 302 × 220mm.
  • Operating temperature 0 – 40 °C (32°F – 104°F)
  • Storage temperature -20 – 70°C (-4°F – 158°F)
  • Relative humidity 5 ~ 95% RH non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚C (80,6˚F).
  • 11,315 W hard drive standby power consumption
  • 24,995 W Typical Operating Mode Power Consumption
  • Kensington security slot
  • Up to 1.5000 simultaneous connections.

How to get the most out of a home NAS like the QNAP HS-264

Now, “with a NAS like this, what can we do with it?” you might think. And the key is that first, you will have massive, dedicated storage, accessible by whoever has access to the network and whoever you give permission to. We have talked at length about the possibilities you have with NAS, even the most domestic ones. Once configured, you create a personalized user and you can manage it from the admin account so that each member of the family has personal folders to keep their private files.

Practically the most difficult thing is to install it and do the initial configuration. Then, you will be able to use the NAS from any device connected to the network, which does not need to be connected by Ethernet cable. You can operate the QTS OS from your PC to use the apps to organize files or prepare torrent downloads, or you can download them to your PC first and then transfer them to the QNAP HS-264 NAS if you want to ensure that you do not introduce harmful content . Thus, you can prepare afternoons and nights of movies and series from the comfort of your room, with dozens of titles chosen by you, and knowing that they will be in local playback quality, without loss of quality due to streaming.

And to that we add options such as being able to store your website and thus not pay for storage, having backup copies of important documents already accessible to everyone responsible, saving the documentation of projects together, being able to send files without having to reupload them to third-party services…


Gallery


Conclusions

The features of the QNAP HS-264 NAS are top notch. A good amount of RAM, a good processor to be able to have that reproduction in 4K quality, as long as the content is. Now, the biggest problem we have is that being a domestic NAS, the entrance fee is high, of almost a thousand euros at the time of writing these lines.

For people who might have considered owning a NAS as well as a player, seeing it approach four figures, no matter how good the capabilities are, is a lot. Add to that the fact that the package is just the NAS. While enthusiasts understand that “just the NAS” means buying separate drives, having to do so increases the bill for the person who wanted to use it for their home.

Having a NAS at home is something that we consider imperative in current times. And we want to give it more uses than being mass storage. Being an entertainment center is a totally logical choice for a device that will be in the living room.. We do not deny that it is a great NAS, since its benefits are enviable among its components and that it has passive ventilation. Clearly, it comes at a price, but it turns off the curious, and will only attract the very convinced.

Outside of that, we have the usual QNAP ecosystem, with numerous applications for many home uses. Viewing photos, video, browsing... Backup and deduplication copies are not lacking. Being able to access it from outside and upload the photos of an event has made it possible for them to be available to an editor, so it can also be used in small businesses. You already know that the usefulness of a NAS is not something that can be directly appreciated, but something that we end up using little by little if we get used to it and get used to the idea of ​​how useful they are.

  • It follows the QNAP trend of an easy-to-install and manage ecosystem.
  • It allows us to have a large video library in the living room that we manage from the room thanks to HDMI, which many NAS do not have.
  • Very high performance, top of the range within what is a domestic NAS.
  • Really silent when we use SSD.
  • For a product designed for the domestic market that seeks the most simple and immediate, it does not come with storage as standard.
  • Too limited for the most expert users and demanding storage.
  • Being such a limited domestic NAS, its entry price is somewhat high.
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Benjamin Rosa

Madrileño whose publishing career began in 2009. I love investigating curiosities that I later bring to you, readers, in articles. I studied photography, a skill that I use to create humorous photomontages.

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