Acquired the QNAP 459 Pro after many months of reading reviews and researching the NAS offerings. My needs are for storage of edited digital photos and streaming videos for the
home theater downstairs. Synology's 1010+ and QNAP 559 Pro were my first choices, with 5 bays and ample interfaces plus class leading performance according to [...].
Although the 459 is a 4 bay unit, its price, size, performance, and construction (metal trays vs plastic) won my vote. I loaded up 4 Seagate 1.5TB drives and had it running in one evening.
The NAS is netwroked to the main G-bit LAN on a Netgear 3700 router. WDTV live can access the network share without any issues over a wireless-n Dlink bridge. You do have to have some IP
networking knowledge to set it up. The discovery utility is excellent for the initial network setup and experimentation. The average home user may not need some of the features like the
add-on QPKG modules (web server, media server, etc), and the dual-gbit network ports (the router has to support port trunking). It is fast but transferring a 1.2TB backup drive over USB
took over 12 hours. I've had the unit for 2 days and have a lot of features to explore. The box has clean lines with an attractive brushed SS finish and useful status LEDs.
Its small enough to sit on my desktop. The admin web interface is fairly decent. Finally its quiet enough not to be noticed next to an iMac and a fanless tower PC.