Based on the name alone, one would expect Qnap’s TS-209 Pro II NAS box to offer more features than its predecessors—particularly our leader in this storage category, Qnap’s TS-109 Pro. And while the former does allow for increased capacity, it does not provide significant improvements in performance or offer more features than the TS-109 Pro, which has been out for more than a year.

The TS-209 Pro II differs from the TS-109 Pro in two fundamental ways: First, the TS-209 Pro II is a two-bay device that only requires you to remove a faceplate to access the hot-swap drive bays, a much simpler process than the disassembly required to stick a new drive in the single-bay TS-109 Pro. Second, the TS-209 Pro II sports 256MB of internal DDR II RAM, double the internal memory of the TS-109 Pro.

We assumed—perhaps incorrectly—that this additional memory would do something, anything, for the TS-209 Pro II’s benchmark performance. It does not. In fact, even after we added a speedy Velociraptor drive to the unit to eliminate any kind of hard drive bottleneck, the TS-209 Pro II was still unable to top the TS-109 Pro in any benchmark. The TS-209 Pro II took an extra 18 seconds to transfer 659MB (180 files) from our computer to our NAS in our small-file test. In our large-file test, the TS-209 Pro II took more than a minute longer than the TS-109 Pro to transfer a single 2.79-gigabyte file.

The TS-209 Pro II is fast when compared against the entire category of NAS devices. But it’s not faster than our speed champion, the TS-109 Pro. Nor do any compelling features push it above and beyond its predecessor. The latest firmware update to the TS-109 Pro gives that device the same features and options as the TS-209 Pro II, including a BitTorrent downloading application, a networked webcam surveillance application, and an iTunes streaming service. The TS-209 Pro II differs only in its RAID offerings, due to its support for two hard drives versus the TS-109 Pro’s one.

We dislike that the TS-209 Pro II drops the eSATA connection that was included with the TS-109 Pro. It’s not a mission-critical deletion, but we’d still much prefer to back up the contents of our NAS box over a speedy SATA connection rather than USB. It would also be nice to have a friendlier hot-swap setup in the front of the TS-209 Pro II. Removing the front bezel doesn’t pain us, but in a perfect world, we'd be able to insert drive without having to take anything off of the device first.

The TS-209 Pro II is a fast product with a bounty of features beyond what we typically see in NAS products, it’s just not among the speediest NAS devices we’ve tested. If you don’t need the increased storage that a second drive bay brings, you’re better off purchasing one of the company’s faster single-drive options—like the TS-109 Pro. 

Qnap TS-209 Pro II

DUNDER MIFFLIN

Faster transfer rates than average, absurd number of features, informative front display.

WERNHAM-HOGG

Not the fastest NAS box we've tested, features not at all different from previous models, only USB connections for external backup.

Qnap

Benchmarks

	Qnap TS-209 Pro II	Qnap TS-109 Pro
Size	N/A	N/A
PC to NAS, small (min:sec)	0:55	0:37
PC to NAS, large (min:sec)	3:45	2:30
NAS to PC, small (min:sec)	0:39	0:38
NAS to PC, large (min:sec)	2:34	2:25

Best scores are bolded. We used the contents of Maximum PC’s November 2007 CD for the small-file testing, and a single 2.79GB file for the large-file testing. All scores are averages of three transfer trials.