compare

SOFTWARE - 8/10
HARDWARE - 9/10
PERFORMANCE - 9/10
PRICE - 8/10
VALUE - 8/10

8.4

PROS

👍🏻Very compact chassis design, despite large storage potential
👍🏻A BIG jump in hardware and scale from the TS-253Be and TS-253D
👍🏻Easily one of the most hardware-packed SMB/Mid-range 2-Bay on the market
👍🏻8GB Memory in the base model will certainly appeal to some users looking at pimping this system out fully in terms of hardware upgrades and storage
👍🏻m.2 NVMe SSD Bays AND a PCIe Upgrade Slot (no need to choose one upgrade path)
👍🏻8x Included Camera Licenses
👍🏻Includes Anti-virus, Firewall Tool, VPN client tools, Malware Remover, network manager and Security Councilor Tool
👍🏻3 Different Container/VM tools that also feature image download centers
👍🏻10Gb/s (1,000MB/s) USB Ports will be incredibly useful
👍🏻Large range of expansion options in the TR/TL series in 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12 Bays
👍🏻HDMI 2.1 Support in the 2-Bay, whereas the 4/6-Bay still runs HDMI 2.0 (released in Spring \'22)

CONS

👎🏻The PCIe Slot is PCIe 3x2 and the M.2 SSD Bays are PCIe 3x1 (likely limitations of all this H/W on a Celeron+chipset
👎🏻Default 8GB of memory (again, down to global memory shortages) does increase the base price and is non-upgradable too
👎🏻The software can be a little inconsistent under excessive use and features a steeper learning curve than Synology

SOFTWARE - 8/10
HARDWARE - 8/10
PERFORMANCE - 8/10
PRICE - 8/10
VALUE - 8/10

8.0

PROS

👍🏻Best example of 3-Bay NAS series so far
👍🏻Quieter than I expected in use
👍🏻
👍🏻Newest Gen Intel Celeron CPU available on NAS right now
👍🏻
👍🏻2.5GbE Ready and has 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gb/s)
👍🏻
👍🏻Good balance of HDD and SSD Storage Support
👍🏻
👍🏻VERY compact deployment
👍🏻
👍🏻4GB Memory by default and 16GB Max is good upgradability
👍🏻
👍🏻Surprisingly small, fo so much storage (long-ish though)
👍🏻
👍🏻QTS 5 has more 1st Party applications and services than any previous version

CONS

👎🏻The lack of 10GbE from the TS-332X is a shame (PCI Lane related)
👎🏻The NVMe SSD Bays are PCIe Gen 3 x2 (PCI Lane related)
👎🏻
👎🏻HDMI 1.4b not HDMI 2.0/a