QNAP’s TS-453BT3 4-bay NAS Caters To Creative Professionals, Offers Thunderbolt 3 & Dual M.2 Slots

Every once in a while, a NAS comes along that stops me right in my tracks (admittedly, not that hard since I’m usually sitting), and QNAP’s TS-453BT3 is definitely one of those. This NAS is in all regards top-end, and has a price tag to match. Based on a single etailer, the NAS looks to carry an SRP of around ~$999 USD. Fortunately, it has the features to back that asking price up.

Powering the TS-453BT3 is Intel’s quad-core Celeron J3455, clocked at 1.5GHz, but able to take advantage of Turbo to peak at 2.3GHz. Using this CPU means that QNAP is bundling in encryption acceleration (via the AES-NI CPU instruction), allowing users to protect their data with a minimal (or perhaps unnoticeable) performance hit. Complementing the CPU is 8GB of DDR3L memory, which happens to be the max supported.

This four-bay NAS supports SATA 6Gbps drives supporting up to 40TB through the use of 10TB drives. The support list doesn’t yet show any 12TB drives, but it seems likely that they will be added at some point, since the rest of the system could handle it. In addition to the SATA drives, this NAS also supports two M.2 SSDs, with another device able to be added via the PCIe expansion slot (an optional feature, it’s noted). Any SSD could be used as a caching solution, allowing you to get your work done without worry that your data is sitting on a slow mechanical disk.

Being that this NAS is as high-end as it is, it should probably come as no surprise that it also supports Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) with two ports, and includes a 10GbE Ethernet port which comes in addition to dual 1Gbps Ethernet ports. Other connectivity can be had through 5x USB 3.0 ports, dual HDMI 1.4b (4K/30), audio ports, an OLED status display, and an IR sensor for use with an included remote control (pictured above).

As mentioned above, the price for this NAS in the US, based on a single etailer (B&H Photo) hovers around ~$1,000 USD – a lot for a 4-bay NAS, perhaps, but this is designed for the biggest power users out there, those who simply can’t have poor performance impede their workflow. Fortunately, the TS-453BT3 doesn’t seem to skimp on anything.