First Impression

The TS-119 is flat black and constructed almost entirely out of aluminum. The only plastic present is the front and rear caps of the enclosure. The construction of the TS-119 felt extremely solid. Two easy to remove aluminum feet are included for holding the enclosure upright.

On the front of the TS-119, you will find several status lights, a USB port, power button, and a copy button. The copy button can be configured to do a few different things in the web interface, including copy data from the device plugged into front USB port, copying data to the device, or synchronizing data between the NAS and USB device.

On the back of the TS-119 there is a single eSATA port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit ethernet port, and power plug for the power adapter. The eSATA and USB ports can be used for added even more external storage or the USB ports allow the enclosure to serve as a networked printer server.

Usage

Once the different folders on the TS-119 are mapped, they shop up a lot like a local drive under My Computer and in almost every other application that allows a user to open or save files. Of course if you prefer, you can also browse for the NAS like you would any other computer on the network in My Network Places.

For the most part, I found the web interface of the TS-119 to be impressive both visually and usability wise. My only gripe is the web file manager. You cannot simply drag files.  I have included a few screen shots of the web interface.  A video tour as well as a live demo of the TS-119′s web interface can be found at http://www.qnap.com/fw_v3/index.aspx?lang=eng

Click any of the thumbnails to view full size image

In addition to the standard NAS functions, QNAP’s TS-119 has a couple other tricks up it’s sleeves. With support for UPnP, DLNA, and iTunes server, you can use the TS-119 as a streaming media server. I tested the iTunes sharing capabilities and was surprised at the ease of use. All I was required to do was upload music to the Qmultimedia folder. Upon opening iTunes, the TS-119 was immediately recognized and I was able to browse through all the music on the TS-119 like I would any other shared iTunes library.

Here is a complete list of the available functions on the TS-119

Performance

To measure the performance of the NAS, I connected it directly to the test bed, which uses onboard Realtek RTL8168 Gigabit network card, using Cat6 cable. This setup eliminates most of the performance bottlenecks present in a network environment including the router/switch being use and other network traffic. The hard drive installed in the TS-119 was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black. The results may still vary depending on which network card you use as well as the hard drive you use in the enclosure.

To benchmark the TS-119, I simply used real life transfer tests with two different file sizes, a 620MB file and a 3.2GB file, and timed how long the transfers took to complete. Both the read and the write tests were preformed three times and the results were averaged.The results are displayed below:

Conclusion

I was very impressed overall with QNAP’s TS-119. Setup was easy and the web interface was visually pleasing and well organized. Even more impressive was the ability to easily tweak every aspect of the TS-119. Not only does the TS-119 offer standard NAS functionality, it also serves as a streaming media server, a computer-less download manager, printer server, and several other useful feature. The TS-119 would definitely be a worthwhile addition to any home or small business network.

Pros:

+ Easy to setup
+ Quality construction
+ Web interface is visually pleasing and well organized
+ Highly customizable
+ Offers more than the standard NAS functionality

Cons

- Web file manager could use some work

Find More Reviews @ TestFreaks

1. Features & SetupFeatures & Setup (1/2)Impressions, Usage & Conclusion (2/2)View AllOn Last Page

Pages:

1 2

Tags: enclosure, NAS, QNAP, Storage, TS-119, Turbo