In recent years, QNAP has emerged as one of the biggest names in the network-attached storage business and for good reason: it offers one of the largest and most impressive NAS product lines. The company's offerings start at $150 and can go for more than $1,000 catering to home, SMB and corporate needs.

Their line-up grew even more diverse earlier this year with the addition of QNAP's new TS-x12 range, which includes single (TS-112 $180), dual (TS-212 $270) and quad-bay (TS-412 $460) iterations designed to deliver well-rounded performance, low power levels and a wealth of applications for home networks.

As one of QNAP's most affordable 4-bay NAS, we were unsurprisingly drawn to the TS-412. The device is fetching only $40 more than the older TS-410, but considering its Marvell processor runs 50% faster (800MHz versus 1.2GHz), we feel the TS-412 is a better value, and so we've opted to review it instead.

We also believe the QNAP TS-412 could displace Synology's $360 DS411J. Although the Synology device features the same 1.2GHz Marvell processor, it comes equipped with 128MB of memory, the TS-412 doubles that to 256MB -- not to mention other shortcomings that we'll explain later in the review.

We're also curious about how it compares to NAS devices in the $500-$600 bracket. Assuming QNAP's latest product doesn't disappoint -- and they rarely do -- the TS-412 has a fair chance at becoming the "go-to" 4-bay NAS.