When the previous version of a product holds a spot in our Best of the Best hardware rankings (see our 
When it comes to computer networking products, there are a few companies that always come to mind. Buffalo is one of them. Storage devices have always been a part of Buffalo's repertoire, so including the TeraStation Pro Quad in this roundup was a no-brainer. But while enterprise-geared products are business as usual for Buffalo, is the Pro Quad consumer-friendly?
Promise Technology has been quietly making a name for itself as a major player in the storage space, producing a number of RAID and NAS solutions for all types of needs. The SmartStor NS4700 is the company's four-bay, performance-oriented NAS. The NS4700 ships without hard drives, but in our testing we used four 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green drives.
There are a number of slick and interesting features buried within Netgear’s ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus. They include an easy-to-navigate setup screen, integrated backup utilities, a magician’s hat worth of streaming services, and ample settings for user permissions and management groups. But don’t let the good looks deceive you: Some of these features can be maddening to configure.You got your Blu-ray drive in my NAS box!
Integrating a Blu-ray drive into a NAS box chassis is akin to mounting a rocket engine to the bed of a pickup truck: It looks impressive, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So it is with LG’s N4B2ND4 NAS box (or the model N4B2N, if you don’t want the four 1TB Hitachi hard drives). The Blu-ray drive—and the drop-dead gorgeous enclosure—set the product apart from the competition, but neither feature adds sufficient value to justify the lofty price tag.
