Looking at 3 different NAS option

[flowrider]

I'm looking at 3 different NAS options to purchase.
Thecus N5550
WD EX4
QNAP TS-431

I have a Synology 2 bay drive right now and an old DLINK DNS-323.

What I have connecting to the NAS:
2 Mac laptops
1 Mac desktop
2 iPads
2 phones

What I'd like to do:
- host my entire iTunes library on the NAS and have my Mac pull from there.
- time machine all the Macs.
- have cloud access to the NAS
- backup options to NAS
- Crashplan, Backblaze or similar cloud back up options.

Suggestions or thoughts?

 

[Trexx]

I have a QNAP TS-453Pro and am doing pretty much all the items that you have listed currently. I have been very happy the QNAP so far (only about 1 1/2 months old).

You are comparing somewhat apples to oranges when looking at Thecus N5550 (Intel Atom w/2GB RAM) vs TS-431 (1.2 Arm w/512MB RAM). A more comparable QNAP model to the Thecus would be a TS-451.

One advantage of going to the TS-451 is that you get HW video transcoding so you can stream video files (such as say .mkv) from the QNAP to your iPad or iPhone w/o having to pre-convert them to mp4 format.

 

[flowrider]

Thanks for your reply. I ended up going with the Asustor 304T. It's an Atom based NAS and the price point is great.