I
f you’re building a tiny PC and don’t have room for
several hard disks, or if you just want to house all
your data in one enclosure that you and your family
can access from anywhere, as well as offering the benefits of
media servers, a NAS enclosure is a very useful tool.
We’re familiar with these devices offering apps and
supporting remote access and cloud functions, but there’s a
renewed push in boosting transfer speeds beyond the usual
1 Gigabit speeds that seem to have been stuck with us for
eternity. QNAP has begun ushering in 2.5 Gigabit speeds into
the lower echelons of its NAS range, meaning the dual-bay
TS-231P3 has the theoretical potential to transfer data at up to
312MB/sec rather than 125MB/sec maximum you’d see from
a typical Gigabit-limited NAS.
Of course, a lot of the resulting performance will depend
on the storage you use too. Some NAS enclosures include
caching, or the ability to install an SSD to boost transfer speeds,
for example. However, while the TS-231P3 does have the
ability to house an SSD and use it for caching, even including a
tool to test different setups, you lose an entire hard disk bay in
the process, making it a questionable course of action in this
dual-bay NAS, especially as SSDs are still much pricier than
hard disks.
Setting up the TS-231P3 is simple and is most easily
achieved on your smartphone, where you scan the QR code
on the side of the NAS and follow the instructions. It will then
install the latest operating system and a basic set of apps.
It’s also simple to install more apps via a well-stocked app
store, where you’ll find a download manager that can handle
BitTorrent downloads with its own scheduler, as well as its
own music, surveillance and media servers, plus Plex support.
You get both 2.5 Gigabit and 1 Gigabit ports, plus a 70mm fan
that remained quiet throughout testing, as well as three USB 3
ports with one on the front to allow fast copying from external
storage devices. It also uses a 1.7GHz quad-core Annapurna
Labs Alpine AL-314 (ARM Cortex-A15) CPU, along with 2GB of
DDR3L RAM. Despite being extremely compact, the TS-231P3
also did a great job of minimising noise and vibration from the
hard disks too.
For testing, we hooked up the NAS to a 2.5 Gigabit port on
a Z490 motherboard, via a 2.5 Gigabit switch, which resulted
in read and write speeds varying between 150MB/sec and
200MB/sec with single large file transfers, with a peak of
240MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark and the AJA Video Systems
benchmark, using both 512MB and 1GB file transfer sizes.
These are all noticeably quicker than the maximum 125MB/
sec speeds you’d see over a Gigabit connection, but due to
VERDICT
A decent NAS with better-than-Gigabit speeds, but your
network will need an upgrade too.CACHE
+ Quad-core CPU
+ Simple setup
+ Excellent transfer^
speedsCRASH
- Other bottlenecks^
can reduce speeds - SSD caching^
disables one bay
-^10 Gigabit NAS^
boxes available for
not much more
SUPPLIER ebuyer.com
QNAP TS231P3
/£275 inc VAT
NAS ENCLOSURE
OVERALL SCORE
88 %
PERFORMANCE
34 / 35
FEATURES
32 / 35
VALUE
22 / 30bottlenecks elsewhere, namely the hard disks that were
configured in a RAID 1 array, it was a little disappointing to
see speeds fall well short of the 300MB/sec+ you could
theoretically achieve.Conclusion
The QNAP TS-231P3 is the fastest NAS we’ve ever tested,
assuming of course that you have the network hardware to
match. Testing it ultimately proved that you can see significant
improvements in file transfer speeds by shifting from 1 Gigabit
to 2.5 Gigabit, which these days may only require a switch
costing around £100 if you have an appropriate motherboard.
Secondly, however, it also proved that there are plenty of
bottlenecks, such as the hard disks themselves, so while
the TS-231P3 is definitely worth considering if you already
have 2.5 Gigabit hardware, if speeds are your priority, it’s
worth opting for 10 Gigabit-capable hardware (assuming you
have a Cat6 cable installation), and/or a NAS that can offer a
more elegant system for SSD caching. If your budget doesn’t
stretch that far, though, the QNAP TS-231P3 is a great buy if
you want to increase speeds without spending over the odds.
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