QNAP TS 130 NAS
A simple home NAS with the performance to handle more than just backups.
In a sea of small NAS, what makes the QNAP TS-130 stand out? Aside from the self described “elegant” baby blue colour, the TS-130 is a memory-focused NAS with the ability to stream 4K video. The rest of the spec is pretty standard, – not a bad thing at all, since the biggest drawcard is actually the software available.
But first the hardware. The $250 TS-130 has a single 3.5in SATA drive bay, one Gigabit Ethernet port plus dual USB around the back. It’s powered by a Realtek RTD1295 SOC that buzzes along at 1.4GHz, backed up by 1GB of DDR4 RAM. The RTD1295 is common in things like Android media players, and consists of an ARM Cortex A53 CPU, a Mali-T820 GPU, and supports hardware decoding of 4K H.265 files at 60fps. It doesn’t do hardware transcoding, but still makes for a pretty solid starter Plex server. One USB port is 3.2 spec and accepts external HDDs, QNAP expand units, or even a 5GbE adapter. The other can handle USB devices such as printers, wireless network adaptors.
Opening the TS-130 involves removing one screw, taking off the cover and slotting in your drive. You could use a 2.5in (with an adaptor plate) but there’s no real point. HDD installed, the NAS is fast and simple to get up and running, and QManager makes it easy to access and manage from a mobile device. There’s loads of apps available, from backups, photo and video management, to productivity and surveillance. QNAPcloud simplifies data sharing across devices, and to friends and family. You can even integrate your existing cloud storage in as part of the NAS volumes.
In testing, the QNAP has the chops to saturate the ethernet connection at 111 MB/s up and 112 MB/s down. Turn on encryption (as everyone should) and you won’t see a noticeable drop in performance, which is great. The (not expandable) 1GB of RAM is decent, but you can slow things down if running many apps at once, or trying to serve up media files to an excess of devices. We averaged around 7 watts (5W to 12W) during normal use, and the cooling fan stays relatively quiet under heavy load. We had no issues doing backups / snapshots and restores, and streaming via Plex was as good as on any other NAS we’ve tested. The productivity apps mostly focus on file storage and sharing, and integrating Microsoft Office rather than offering their own solution. QVR Elite is a solid surveillance option, and comes with two camera licences for free. There’s also loads of other apps available in the QNAP app centre. Security is decent, with options for an automatic security advisor, IP blocking, 2-step verification and notifications.
The TS-130s biggest competition comes from it’s sibling, the TS-230, which features the same CPU, with 2GB of RAM, dual drive bays, and an extra USB port on the front, for a modest $50 price increase.
An above average CPU and RAM combo, solid features and affordable price make the QNAP TS-130 (and the two bay TS230) worth considering.
“In testing, the QNAP has the chops to saturate the ethernet connection at 111 MB/s up and 112 MB/s down. ”