The new TS-464 provides superior functionality compared with similar 4-bay NAS on market, but at the same price point. Get more for your money with the TS-464!

Now ports and connections on the Synology DS423+ and QNAP TS-464 NAS is an area that is INCREDIBLY diverse in it’s approach by either brand. Once again, the reasons clearly to do with the CPU choice and position on their respective brand portfolios, but also the brand’s own decisions in build architecture/priorities still massively continue to be a contributing factor here. The Synology DS423+ NAS certainly comes across as the weaker of the two here in its connectivity and although a lot of the QNAP’s advancements in connectivity could be described as ‘future upgrades and simply facilitating extras or addons’, it still manages to provide a greater deal of connectivity to the day 1 user than the Synology system here. The port(s) that almost certainly will be the one that jumps out immediately on each system is the network connections. The DS423+ NAS arrives with 2x 1GbE ports which, although allowing link aggregation to create 2GbE with a smart switch, was still a little underwhelming in 2023 (as we had already started seeing 2.5GbE arriving at the same price as 1GbE with a number of client hardware devices in 2020). The newer QNAP TS-464 features 2x 2.5GbE (so 5GbE via link aggregation and a supported switch) which now that some ISPs and budget switch manufacturers are providing affordable 2.5GbE solutions, will be incredibly useful. Then the is the additional PCIe upgrade slot on the QNAP NAS that allows upgrades towards 10GbE, dual-port 10GbE cards and even combo cards to add 10G and further M.2 NVMe bays via a single card. Again, there ARE upgrades and not something in the baseline model, but you can not argue with the future-proofing available here. Additionally, the DS923+ NAS released in December 2022 had the option to upgrade to 10GbE – something hugely absent here in the eyes of many on this 4xSATA and 2xNVMe DS423+ NAS. There is simply no avoiding that in the 2023 released DS423+, those 1GbE ports are something of a limiting factor. ModelAlthough I still prefer the Synology DSM interface overall, that's probably because I'm just more familiar with it. That said, while I was exploring the TS-464 for the review, I began to feel much more comfortable with the UI and how things were laid out, so you can't go wrong with QTS. Conclusion

Looking at average latency with 8k reads/writes at 70%/30%, the TS-464 NAS is considerably faster than the TS-453D on SMB operations, never exceeding 189ms vs the TS-453D hitting 1462.55ms. In fact, the TS-464 average latency for SMB and iSCSI are virtually equal and match up with the results for the TS-453D iSCSI operational latency. The internal hardware of the TS-464 is by FAR the best example of a prosumer/SMB 4-Bay NAS in this price tier from both QNAP and any other brand. Yes, they have had to make a balancing choice between providing a multitude of upgrade and scaling paths in the hardware architecture vs the CPU available, but overall I really cannot challenge them on the range of ports, connections and internal hardware that is available here. I am a little surprised by how much hardware is inside the TS-464 and so close together (leading me to imagine that this system with a fully populated 4-bay storage RAID, 2x NVMe SSD, 16GB memory and a PCIe card would get really hot, i.e. fans going NUTS!) but you cannot really argue with the wide range of options available to the end useR in terms of the day 1 level of hardware on offer, as well as the many ways and means you can change this system in it’s lifespan to best suit your storage and network requirements. Let’s discuss the software included with your TS-464 NAS.Overall, although the design of the TS-464 has changed very little on the face of it versus the TS-453D that came before it, it is still a nicely presented chassis. However, the inclusion of USB 3.2 Gen 2 on the front aside, it is in the ports, connections and internal hardware configuration that QNAP have scaled this device up noticeably compared with it’s predecessor. QNAP reserves the right to replace partial parts or accessories if the original is no longer available from its manufacturer/supplier. Any replacement would be fully tested and verified to meet strict compatibility and stability guidelines and will deliver identical performance to the original.