My background: I am a 33 year old Norwegian guy with a Masters in electronics. I would consider myself more of a gadget freak with really high demands, rather than a computer wizard or programming guru. I love the ability to modify all kinds of settings and option. But once I have gotten it "right", I usually leave the settings-pages alone for months at a time. I do appreciate extra features, like DynDNS, Torrent-client, VPN and Cloud. But I do usually not find amusement in trying out new add-ons, unless I have a specific challenge at hand.
My former user-experience: I used to be a totally convinced Netgear-preacher, "selling" Netgear to everyone I knew, with or without the need for a NAS! Over the years, I have owned three different Netgear models. (Duo, NV+ and NVX). Or four units to be exact. The first NVX I bought One of them was DOA. That is when I started losing faith in Netgear. It seemed as if the quality-control had dropped significantly after the NV+. I had nothing but problems with that box! And Netgear support seemed to just want to dodge my requests for help. And most of those features that one stood out with Netgear was either stuff that I did not use after all, or stuff that did not work anyway. That includes failing built-in features like media-streaming and backup-functions. I realized I had gotten used to the unit failing systematically, and how I could live with those faults. After all, there was no apparent way to fix them. And then: Enough!
Choosing QNAP: After reading some tests, my attention fell on QNAP. Not that they always where the one and only at top score. They were a bit expensive for one. But they consequently got high scores on the areas that mattered mostly to me. Better performance, more built-in feature, and what seemed to be a much more intuitive GUI. I found myself left with some technical questions unanswered by those magazines I read. Luckily QNAP's representative (Fanny) could be of help! Even before buying a QNAP, I got more help and advice than Netgear offered me in total over the years of ownership! At that point, there was no doubt! I ended up buying a QNAP TS-659 Pro, with six 2TB WD Enterprise disks. A choice I have not had any regrets with, after little less than a year of ownership! Mind the Enterprise disks though, as those are a bit more noisy than normal disks.
Owning the QNAP: The first thought that crossed me when unpacking the TS-659 Pro was "quality". And the GUI is heaven, compared to Netgear! Obviously there is a huge number of menus and settings to choose from. But there is no way around that with such a device! At least they are all much better organized and understandable than with the Netgear-units. The transfer-speeds are very satisfying, and much more consistent than with Netgear. Also, the selection of built-in features is really good! They even have antivirus, VPN and cloud-service! And it seems to me as if they keep updating their whole range of products with new software and features! Not just the new models. I believe VPN-server is one of those features that was added after product-release. - On the flip-side, my ReadyNAS NVX was quite a bit faster in boot-up. And it was a bit more flexible when it came to RAID-expansion, if I am not mistaken. But how often does those things matter? You only re-boot your NAS once every couple of months. And sticking to the industry-standard for RAID seems like a good idea for data-recovery, if your NAS should ever fail.
I am convinced! I feel certain that this NAS will serve me for a long time! And my next NAS will most likely be another QNAP!