The QNAP TS-216G 2-bay NAS. Photo: QNAP
Looking for a new home NAS (network-attached storage) to back up your photos and data? QNAP’s new TS-216G 2-Bay NAS brings what the company calls, “high-speed performance, AI-driven capabilities, and robust data protection” to home users and small businesses.
It comes powered by an ARM quad-core Cortex-A55 2.0GHz processor, a Mali-G52 GPU, and 4GB of RAM (non-expandable). The TS-216G has a built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to aid in tasks that involve AI.
For example, when using QNAP's QuMagie photo albums feature, the NAS can analyse and sort photos on-device. This can be important for users who do not wish to upload their photos to a cloud service to be analysed. These images will then be categorised in albums like "People", "Things", "Places", and "Events" for easy searching. And with QNAP's search engine Qsirch, which searches through a photo's metadata, users can even search their photos by colour, camera brand, and even camera lens.
This isn't the first QNAP NAS to come with an NPU, as we covered one here. Interestingly, that was also a 2-bay NAS targeting home and SOHO users as well.
The NAS features two Ethernet ports – one 2.5GbE and a second 1GbE. Photo: QNAP
Since this is only an enclosure, you’ll need to house it yourself. Handily for drive compatibility, it can house both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA SSD and HDD drives. It supports up to 38.6TB of storage capacity using two 22TB hard drives so you should have more than enough storage to get started.
For connectivity, the rear of the unit houses one 2.5GbE port, one 1GbE port, two USB-A 2.0 ports, a power jack, a reset button, and a single 70mm fan for cooling. The front also has a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port. It doesn’t come with an HDMI port, so using it to stream content directly to your TV isn’t an option. However, as with most modern network-connected TVs these days, if your NAS is in the same network as your TV, you can easily access media content on it as long as you have the "DLNA media server" option enabled on your NAS configuration.
Availability and pricing
The TS-216G is available now at S$490 and comes with a two-year limited warranty. It can be bought from Lazada and QNAP's official Store on Shopee. You can also check with distributor partner Convergent.
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