QNAP TS-509 Pro Conclusion

Benchmark Reviews believes that manufacturers should be educating consumers with their product packaging, so they can make the most informed decision possible. This is why we ratie the retail package presentation. in terms of the TS-509 Pro NAS this rating is somewhat high because QNAP has done an excellent job of informing buyers with plenty of on-the-box specifications and feature information. It doesn't hurt that they've got plenty of room, as the retail package is very large in comparison to most products. The concept of truth in advertising is getting further and further away every year, but for once I can see that not every company is out to cover their product with catch phrases and slogans.

There is a very small niche of products that offer five bays of storage, and even fewer with an attractive finish. The ventilation grill along the left side of the front bezel goes completely unnoticed and provide discreet funtion with emphasis on fashion. The silver power and backup bottons pair themselves to the round lock faces on each drive tray, and help add accent to the overall look. Colorful LED lights keep things in motion without to much going on so to keep the corporate image intact without too much pizzazz.

QNAP took their time with the TS-509 Pro, and the end result is a very strong product destined to command any environment it's placed into. The Titanium-colored steel chassis is more than enough to protect against impact damage, but the piano-black bezel is high gloss and could lose its mirror finish as fine scratches develope. The integrated power supply could be trouble if it ever required replacement, but thankfully QNAP offers a warranty for those willing to be patient with their service.

Since Gigabit Ethernet has found its way into the mainstream, bandwidth throughput has gradually grown for all products involved. The Turbo Station TS-509 Pro is no different, and it handily outperformed the closest competition we compared it against in our benchmark tests. With tremendous read-from bandwidth peaking around 64.0 MiB/s for a 1 Gibibyte file, and actually improving to 68.3 MiB/s in write-to performance, the Turbo Station proved itself to be a real top-performer. The list of functionality and features is nearly endless, and could almost be considered too much for one device since it might overwhelm the average home network enthusiast or even a trained IT professional. But as the saying goes: "It's better to have and not need then to need and not have". All that's missing is the ability to install software to emulate a Windows environment.

Corporate Enterprise environments have never seen so much value in a high-performance NAS. As of July 2009 the TS-509 Pro is listed at NewEgg for $899.99 without drives, which is certain to please everyone from the accountant to the IT/IS manager since almost everything built for the business market has a high price-tag. In all regards, the Turbo Station is far more valuable than the going street price; but I admit there aren't too many consumers who will actually use it for everything it offers.

The QNAP Turbo Station Dual-Gigabit 5-bay hot-swappable SATA-II NAS server is going to be an excellent alternative to the basic workgroup and domain level file servers that most resellers use for small- to medium-sized business networks. The additional functionality should not go overlooked, because it could save your company money in other departments of cut the cost of experimenting on a sandbox server. Five bays of storage allow possibilities most other all-in-one products cannot offer, and satisfy the storage-space intensive Enterprise market. I give a strong recommendation to the QNAP TS-509 Pro for storage-centric operational needs, as there isn't very much else available to offer Enterprise level redundancy for the same price range.

Pros:

+ Extremely powerful NAS product
+ 64.0/68.3 MiB/s Gigabit Ethernet read/write performance
+ RAID-0, 1, 5, 6, 5+Spare, Single, and JBOD disk configurations
+ Dual Gigabit Ethernet NICs with teaming and failover safety
+ High-quality durable metal enclosure
+ Elegant appearance without functional compromise
+ No wiring need; SATA and power on backplane
+ Five total High-Speed USB 2.0 ports
+ Simple HTML administration interface
+ Frequent firmware development and free software support
+ Pre-installed PHP+MySQL and Apache web server
+ Multi-Terabyte storage capacity
+ Excellent cooling and ventilation
+ LED Panel can control basic functions without web interface
+ Offers eSATA connectivity for 1.5 GBps external storage

Cons:

- Does not offer Jumbo Frame functionality
- Basic web interface compared to competing options
- QNAP does not offer a local US support telephone line
- Integrated PSU could cause trouble if replacement is needed out of warranty
- Package includes obsolete CAT-5e Ethernet patch cable

Ratings:

• Presentation: 9.25
• Appearance: 9.50
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 9.75
• Value: 7.50

Final Score: 9.1 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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