In the past, we reviewed the TS-669 Pro, a NAS that belongs to QNAP 's higher category and one that suits the small and medium-sized business environment well. Their Pro line includes many high-end characteristics like an LCD display and SATA III support, both of which are very nice, but make the price sky rocket. Taking into account these tough economic times, QNAP decided to offer a more budget friendly alternative to users who need a high-performance NAS without many bells and whistles that would, inevitably, boost its price.

TS-x69L units have the same guts as the TS-x69 Pro ones and provide the same performance because they are equipped with the same dual-core Intel Atom CPUs. They have the same amount of RAM and the same number of USB 3.0 ports, but lack, in order to lower the price, SATA 6GB/s support, lockable caddies, and an LCD display. We are pretty sure that many users won't mind the above omissions in order to save some money on the final price. After all, performance is still the same since SATA III disks don't show noticeable improvements in NAS transfer speeds.

In this review, we will take a good look at the TS-869L: a NAS that will feel like its home is in a medium-sized business environment since it offers huge storage-capacity by accommodating up to eight HDDs. It is powered by a dual-core Atom that runs at 2.13 GHz, has 1 GB RAM, which can be expanded to 3 GB, and supports all popular RAID modes. The price of HDDs has, thankfully, started to come back down to normal levels after a very long time, which means that the cost of equipping the NAS with normal 2TB disks won't surpass the cost of the NAS itself.