Review: Qnap TBS-453A NASbook

Conclusion

Having cemented its position as one of the world's premier NAS suppliers, Qnap now has the means to innovate and create unique storage solutions that few others would attempt.

The TBS-453A is a perfect example of a manufacturer creating a product not because it needs to, but rather because it can. Introduced to the market as the world's first NASbook, this four-bay solution eschews low-cost, high-capacity hard disks in favour of high-performance M.2 SSDs.

From an archiving or cost-per-GB perspective, the switch from HDD to SSD appears counterintuitive, yet the transition has enabled Qnap to offer its award-winning QTS feature set in a distinctive form factor. Relatively small, light and easily transportable, the TBS-453A targets a very particular customer seeking high-end NAS functionality to go.

We're not entirely convinced such an audience exists, and we feel Qnap has missed a trick in not fully exploiting SSD performance with a 10GbE network interface, however the NASbook could serve as a sign of other innovations to come. It's compact, efficient, quiet and fast, and though the cost and capacity of M.2 storage is currently prohibitive, the TBS-453A works well enough to suggest that mainstream SSD-based NAS solutions are closer than we think.

Qnap TBS-453A NASbook

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The Qnap TBS-453A NASbook is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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