A Closer Look
The QNAP TVS-863+ ships in a full retail package that gives shoppers a lot of relevant information in a retail environment.
Most SMB NAS products are sold online in North America, but we give QNAP kudos for printing the information on the package. In some countries you can find NAS in retail stores or computer malls.
Inside the package, we found the TVS-863+ secured in closed cell foam with the accessories in a separate compartment from the main unit. The corners are well protected, making it very unlikely for this model to be damaged during shipping.
The TVS-863+ ships with a quick installation guide, fine and coarse screws for mounting 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives and two sets of keys for the locking drive bays. The system also ships with a power cables and three Ethernet cables.
The gold standard? The TVS-x63 series comes in a champagne gold color that is popular in home theater products in Japan. I'm not sure if that was QNAP's inspiration for producing this series in gold rather than the traditional black, but it's a nice change-up in the test lab.
The system allows users to see IO activity in a number of ways. LAN and USB LEDs on the front fascia indicate activity and LEDs that shine through the drive bays also show disk connectivity for the bay and activity. A long, thin LED-lit area on the far left indicates power.
The power button to turn the system on is just above the one-touch-copy USB 3.0 port. To shut the system down you need to hold the power button. It's a thoughtful feature given the nearness to the copy function for external storage devices.
The front LED display gives system status information and warns in the event of a drive failure. The display is useful for the initial setup as it displays the number of loaded drives, IP and other useful information.
A sticker on top of the system gives users the key to connect to QNAP's myQNAPcloud feature for mobile devices.
The system is designed so most of the air flow passes over the hard drives to keep them cool. The compute side does have vents so air can pass through to keep the processor, chipset and RAM cool.
The back of the system has a majority of the IO ports. This is a full feature system with four USB 3.0 ports on the back as well as two HDMI ports for 1080P video playback and NAS-as-Desktop functions. Users can use the NAS as a computer by plugging in a keyboard, mouse and video to the system.
The star of this system is the 10-gigabit Ethernet. This one port has the same throughput as 10 traditional gigabit Ethernet ports. Two gigabit Ethernet ports are also on the back of the system for fail- over or connectivity to a separate network.
This system has an internal power supply so you don't have to manage placement of an external power brick.