Time to test the almighty power of the locost clan again!

have recently been considering ditching my server and swapping over to one of the latest nas boxes. A. because they are small and use hardly any electricity compared to my server with 1000w psu and B because i want a more reliable raid backup configuration that i can hide away in a dark corner behind the tv. C. i can use it for my cctv media server, backup location and a cloud server (so i dont have to put my data from smart phones/ipads etc on an internet one owned by someone else that want to spy on me )

After quite a bit of research i have whittled down to three contenders but just cant decide which one to go for. Does anyone have any experience of any of these? or perhaps another really good middle of the range pro/consumer nas i have missed out?

No1 contender at the moment is the Asustor AS-302t
pros are the price. it has hdmi out and can run xbmc as a media centre, be a cloud server, can do live transcoding to mobiles and tablets when im out and about and the big feature for me is it can work with my 4 current IP cameras without any extra licence payable.


No2 contender is the QNAP TS-269L
pretty much does everything the asustor does and more but is more expensive by a good £80 margin and only supports one ip camera without paying for more licences.

No3 contender is the synology ds214+. it basically is the king! best software best features but has one big downfall, no hdmi output or xbmc so i would have to stream to the tv over the network using up network bandwidth rather than just plug it directly into the tv and play off the drive. again only supports one ip camera without paying for more licences

im really torn the Asustor is a good all rounder and good value/feature mix, but the synology just stomps everything on outright raw performance minus its lack of hdmi, the qnap is also absolutely excellent but the additional £80 for basically the same thing is just putting me off.

Been using my buffalo link station for last few years with nothing but good things to say about it.

I've just bought a dlink dns327l and it's great, no av out but streaming is fine for me. Works with dlinks IP cameras very nicely too.

[Edited on 20/2/14 by GRRR]

Hi Ash, hope this finds you well, I settled for a WD 6TB my book live duo which I've set up Raid backup so effectively its 3TB works well, though my media streamer sometimes has issues with getting tracks in the right order as well as a couple of glitches with album art. Had a firmware update for the streamer but still work in progress.

Forgot to mention the synology was in the frame as well, has had good reviews from the mags etc.

[Edited on 20/2/14 by Mr C]

[Edited on 20/2/14 by Mr C]

I went with a DROBO FS
So far so good....(but one day it WILL bite me on my arse)

Regards
Rob

2nd for the buffalo
bit sluggish to boot but streams perfect to several devices at the same time
got the twin drive 6tb version and absolutely no problems with it - had it over 12 months now

I'd go for the Synology....but I'm interested to see how you get on with one of the others...

well i have gone for the Asustor AS-302t and two Hitachi 3TB Enterprise level drives.

Even though Asus are very new into the NAS market at the moment, i'm predicting that they will quickly establish themselves as a strong player. All their other devices i have are fantastic and i don't expect less from their NAS products. the price vs features available was just too hard to ignore its very impressive. i will report back when its arrived and setup.

Ash, hows the new NAS?