The N4B1 measures 190 × 289.4  × 270.5 mm (7.48 x 11.39 x 10.65 in) and weighs in at 7 Kg (15.43 lbs) without any hard drives. While this is a bit large for a four bay NAS, the built in Blu-ray ReWriter accounts for much of this extra space. Above the Blu-ray drive, you can see an LCD panel and a series of buttons (Power, Disc Open, Mode and Set). The panel shows the current state of the N4B1 and can be used with the buttons to setup the system and control a number of its functions.

Along the bottom, there is a built in memory card reader and a USB port where you can plug in a digital camera, flash drive or external hard drive.

The four hard drive bays are located behind the N4B1's front cover. Before you can remove a drive, you need to unlock the disk rack by pulling out the red locker lever. Once this is done, the drive can be removed from the NAS. The whole rack system is surprisingly smooth and it takes very little effort to insert and remove the drives.

To the right of the hard drive bays, there is a series of LED's. These LED's show the current state of the drives. If one or more of them light up red, there is a problem. Otherwise, they will light up blue if everything is operating normally.

The rear of the N4B1 is pretty straight forward. Along with the AC power connection, there is a 92mm fan. This fan is temperature controlled and only spins as fast as needed to keep the system cool. Also located along the right hand side, there is an ethernet port, eSATA port and two more USB ports. Right below these is a reset switch that will forcefully shutdown the system.