The QNAP TS-432X is a rather unusual product in that it's being powered by an Annapurna Labs Alpine AL524 SoC, based on four Cortex-A57 cores. This Arm core was released in 2012 and technically the Alpine SoCs should be phased out in favor of Amazon's Graviton family of server chips, which are also designed by Annapurna Labs. That said, it seems like QNAP is still being able to get these chips and for what it's worth, it appears as if the AL524 stands up pretty well towards more powerful and more recent Intel hardware, at least as a NAS processor, as long as you don't look too closely at the power efficiency. One downside we spotted straight away with the AL524 is that it only seems to have support for a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports, which means any expansion units will be quite slow.

The standard feature set should otherwise be good enough for most home users and small businesses. We would have preferred to have seen a 10 Gbps non SFP+ port as standard, but hopefully that's something that will be included on next gen hardware, courtesy of the cheaper and cooler running 10 Gbps Ethernet controllers coming from Realtek. That said, the SFP+ port is also likely to make the TS-432X an appealing option for those that have invested in fiber based 10 Gbps network, as the US$139 upgrade cost for a QNAP 10 Gbps card is a tad too pricey in our book, especially as the TS-432X doesn't have enough grunt to deliver full 10 Gbps performance. With a pair of 2.5 Gbps, either for bonding or failover, the TS-432X should still be an appealing upgrade to those that are using an older QNAP NAS today, as QNAP has made it fairly painless to move drives from one model to another. However, the TS-432X isn't the best value option out there if you look at what's available from the competition.

This brings us to the biggest issue with the TS-432X, the asking price of US$580, US$80 more than the TerraMaster F4-424, which comes with more RAM, a faster processor by all accounts, two M.2 NVMe slots for SSDs, and USB-C connectivity. To be fair, QNAP has much more advanced software, with more features than any consumer or small business could ever use, and you're paying something to get access to the richer ecosystem here as well. However, it's worth keeping in mind that not all software from QNAP runs on Arm based hardware, so you won't get access to all the software available in the QNAP App Center if you choose to go with one of their Arm based NAS devices. Then there's issue with the very old Linux kernel and QNAP's ability to keep their OS safe from attacks, which will get harder as time goes by, due to software vulnerabilities being one of those things that tend to be discovered over time. On the other hand, QNAP is one of the biggest NAS manufacturers out there and that pedigree should hopefully also bring something to the table, at least for those that are looking to take advantage of support services, something many of the smaller players can't quite compete with.

Overall, the QNAP TS-432X is something of a mixed bag. Had it been US$100 to 150 less, it would've been an interesting product, but as it stands, it's simply too expensive for what you get. The hardware isn't bad as such, but the competition has caught up to QNAP, which has priced the TS-432X out of the race. Yes, you do get a much wider software ecosystem and more features, but this isn't always an advantage, many people simply don't need most of the features on offer here. At a lower price, we would've recommended the TS-432X, especially for those that have an older QNAP NAS and are looking at an easy upgrade path, but as it stands, even that is hard.