QNAP TS-269L Dual-bay NAS Review

In the world of NAS appliances, competition is fierce, and the choice is amazing – so amazing, in fact, that choosing the right one requires some real effort. QNAP’s TS-269L, which found its way to our test bench, is designed for those who like everything from a home or SOHO NAS. Let’s find out if it delivers.

The last time we took a look at a QNAP NAS, Windows Vista’s first service pack had come out a month earlier. So, we’re overdue on taking a look at another, but we’re in luck: The TS-269L is a great model to end our drought with.

As a “Home & SOHO” NAS, the TS-269L is designed with entertainment, productivity, file sharing, and of course, effective backups, in mind.

What helps set one NAS vendor apart from another nowadays isn’t just the hardware features, but software features. When Greg took a look at QNAP’s TS-109 those six years ago, its Web interface was about as generic as one could get. At the time, no one thought anything of it, but as with the Web itself, evolution happens.

Today, NAS vendors take their Web interfaces – and software – very seriously. Once that box is plopped under a desk, it’s the software that gets the user’s full attention, and it has to look good. It has to be intuitive. Across the biggest NAS vendors, I believe Synology and QNAP produce the most appealing interfaces. From a usability standpoint, I’d rank a lot of them about the same. From a feature standpoint, that can of course change based on the NAS itself, as well as the vendor’s app selection (an area that’s hard to conclude-upon, given most of them offer a lot of apps).

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