We tested load power measurements when the NAS was streaming a 1080p video clip to a Playstation 3 and idle measurements after 15 minutes of inactivity – a period when the hard drives were set to spin down.

The NS4600 has comparatively high power consumption and no hibernate feature

Excellent file transfer speeds appear to have come at the price of above average power consumption. The idle power consumption is particularly odd and we suspect the NS4600 isn’t slowing down our RE2-GP hard disks properly. At 31W and running 24 hours a day, the NS4600 has running costs of £30 per year.

The hotswappable caddies can be pulled and replaced as needed

There’s no scheduled on/off on the NS4600, which lets some other Nas boxes hibernate at any time you please, perhaps during the night time, so they draw just half a watt and make no noise. Instead, the NS4600 will carry on chugging away until you manually turn it off, when it draws an unreasonable 4W. Its saving grace in this area comes from its wake-on-Lan function, which lets you turn the NS4600 on remotely using the SmartNavi utility.

Verdict

The lack of MySQL and scheduled on/off are arguably the NS4600’s biggest flaws but, according to Promise, these features should appear in future firmware updates. If all goes to plan then such addictions, along with the Gatekeeper service, will put the NS4600 on the top of the NAS box shopping list. For those wanting these functions now, there are plenty of 4-bay NAS alternatives for £400 that will do the trick. Nevertheless, the SmartStor NS4600 still has more features than most. It’s quiet and has excellent media streaming capabilities with very fast transfer speeds. In this capacity, it certainly lives up to its promise. ®

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