It's really a big surprise to all of us the how far NAS devices have gone in the past 3 years alone not only because as we speak most offices and households where we're located own at least one but also because in 2014 alone manufacturers released roughly the same number of new models as they did in the two years prior (2012-2013). We did expect this to happen in the long run since let's face it NAS servers offer many things an HTPC (or even an mITX system) really can't such as size, reduced power consumption, price (depends on the model of course) and out of the box use thanks to the preinstalled OS and the plethora of available (and free) applications. Our focus lately has been on some of the highest-end models to hit the market lately aimed for SMB (small business) use but since many of you asked with us today we have one of the latest low/mid-end NAS servers by QNAP the TurboNAS TS-431.

QNAP Systems, Inc., as its brand promise "Quality Network Appliance Provider", aims to deliver comprehensive offerings of cutting edge network attached storage (NAS) and network video recorder (NVR) solutions featured with ease-of-use, robust operation, large storage capacity, and trustworthy reliability. QNAP integrates technologies and designs to bring forth quality products that effectively improve business efficiency on file sharing, virtualization applications, storage management and surveillance in the business environments, as well as enrich entertainment life for home users with the offering of a fun multimedia center experience. Headquartered in Taipei, QNAP delivers its solutions to the global market with nonstop innovation and passion.

For people looking to get a powerful NAS server are almost always after Intel based solutions but for a low/mid-end model that's not really necessary so QNAP took a different path with the TurboNAS TS-431 since this time over they made use of an ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core 1.2GHz processor by Freescale (1 MB L2 cache) which they paired with 512MB DDR3 RAM and 512MB flash memory. The Freescale ARM Cortex-A9 processor is also responsible for the graphics part (3D/2D) via the embedded graphics processing units by Vivante (GC2000/GC355/GC320) but unfortunately although it does bring support for HDMI v1.4 QNAP didn't equip the TS-431 with a HDMI output (probably due to the relatively low amount of RAM present). Other features include four SATA III/II compatible 3.5"/2.5" Hot swappable drive bays, two Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet ports, three USB 3.0 ports and one eSATA port. Since however we want to see just how powerful the Freescale AMR Cortex-A9 dual core processor is let's move to the rest of our review.