QNAP launches new 3-bay NAS with dual NVMe M.2 SSD slots, auto-tiering and Plex support

QNAP is back this month with a new addition to its 3-bay NAS lineup. The new TS-351 is a Home NAS system featuring dual NVMe M.2 SSD slots, multimedia streaming capabilities and auto-tiering for storage efficiency.

This 3-bay NAS runs in RAID 5 and is made primarily for homes or home offices, providing an easy share point for files and a personal system to store media and stream throughout the house. Under the hood, the TS-351 features an Intel Celeron J1800 dual-core CPU running at 2.4GHz. It also comes with either 2GB or 4GB of DDR3L memory, which is upgradeable to 8GB. There is support for two M.2 SSDs but you also get support for traditional SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 6Gb/s too.

Installing the drives is quick and painless thanks to a tool-less drive bays. The NAS is small enough too, so finding a good place to set it up shouldn't be a problem. If you choose to upgrade the TS-351 with M.2 drives, then you'll be able to utilise QNAP's software-defined SSD extra over-provisioning tool to obtain a greater balance between performance and efficiency, giving the SSDs a longer lifespan.

The traditional hard drives are coupled with QNAP's Qtier technology, which enables auto tiering. This essentially moves frequently used ‘hot data' to higher performance drives and moves ‘cold data' to a slower storage drive to strike a mix between performance and efficiency. The TS-351 comes with support for Plex Media Server, so managing videos, music and photos is very easy and you can then stream the content to any device capable of running Plex.

Here are the TS-351's key specifications:

• TS-351-4G: 4 GB DDR3L RAM, upgradable to 8 GB
• TS-351-2G: 2 GB DDR3L RAM, upgradable to 8 GB

3-bay tower with  hot-swappable 3x 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD. Bays 1 & 2 support SATA 3Gb/s while bay 3 supports SATA 6Gb/s. Intel Celeron J1800 dual-core 2.41 GHz processor (2.58 GHz boost); dual-channel SODIMM DDR3L RAM; 2x M.2 2280 PCIe (Gen2 x1, 5Gb/s) NVMe SSD slots; 1 x 1080p HDMI v1.4a output; 1x Gigabit RJ45 LAN port; 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 ports; 1x 3.5mm line-out audio jack; 1x built-in speaker.

The TS-351 completes QNAP's 3-bay NAS lineup and is available from their website directly starting from this week.

KitGuru Says: Are any of you currently in the market for a new NAS? 

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