Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Before you buy: google "DSM demo" and select the first result. They have a free trial of what using the NAS is like, (with a few caveats of course). You can use the interface, use some of the packages, look at the options. It's a touch slower than my own NAS but otherwise very indicative of the end user experience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I bought this with the intention of decluttering my computer's HDD and for sharing my movies and things with my roommate, and for this purpose, it works brilliantly. But it has far and away exceeded my (admittedly naive) expectations. Hardware: I'm a huge fan of SFF things, especially with computers. This NAS is amazingly efficient in terms of space utilization. As a fan of design, I give them a huge thumbs up here. With the drives out you can see everything inside, and they don't waste a single milliliter of space. Everything has a use from the structure, to the PCB, to how they've tapered one edge to make the power button and LED on the side fit nicely while still fitting with the exterior design language! There's a fan for the drives, and it's user-replaceable! Seriously, this thing has a winning design. The tiny PCB packs a relatively low-power 1 GHz dual core ARM processor which is how it gets away with such little cooling in this form factor. As far as how this impacts performance, I don't have another NAS here to compare it with. I will say that if I was given the interface and had to guess the speed of the device, I would not guess that low. I guess that's the magic of first party hardware and OS. The only very minor gripe I can throw at them: why do I have to label my drive sleds? Synology only provides 4 stickers and sleds anyway, so it's not like I'll be swapping them out. The stickers are tiny; I would have preferred if the labels were just embedded on like they are under the bays. As far as the drives I'm using, I have 4x Samsung Seagate 2TB Laptop HDD SATA III 2.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive 9.5MM (ST2000LM003) in mine with a RAID 5 config. No problems with noise, but I have mine on a shelf in my office. If it were on my desk right in front of me, spinning 4 platters at once, I'll hear it, but that's what I get for using HDDs. Under normal conditions I cannot hear the device when it's in use only a few meters away. Operating System: I've thoroughly enjoyed using this. The DSM OS has a nice Unix-like feeling, its got lots of options for configuration and access. I don't know what I expected, but its essentially a low-power server, which is awesome. I usually dismiss any service that claims to have an "App store" but this is a new product category for me, and the package center has a compelling selection. I am able to control the access of all the users, because I'm literally the sysadmin. It has unix-style system permissions, for users and groups with folders and files. Packages: This is where the device really sells itself for me. I bought it thinking it was just a storage box, but these packages have changed how I use the device. Here's a list of some that I found pretty cool: - They have a first party suite of packages for managing media like movies, music and photos. I use the Video Station package the most and it makes the viewing experience remarkably easy. There's a web portal for desktops, and of course apps for both iOS and android which work pretty identically to each other. Video Station can stream playback to lots of devices, DLNA, Chromecast (I can only do this on the mobile apps, not the web interface for some reason), and even Apple's own airplay. It's not perfect, but it's really good. - Developer tools like Python, Java, Ruby, and even a first party Git server, which I think is pretty neat. There are a few cases where I could see myself using my own personal git server, and I've downloaded it but haven't had the need to use it yet. - A seedbox style download manager. I've used this to download an OS disk and it worked splendidly, it's a set it and forget it kind of thing, just like regular torrenting. But what's more, I could be at work and pull up my NAS desktop and check on the status, add more, the works. There's loads more that I haven't even been able to use yet. A personal VPN, a security camera suite, Wikis, moodle, backup managers, cloud backups (which I think Synology hosts themselves, don't quote me on this), etc. I recommend you look at the full list on their website before you buy, (google "DSM packages" and its the first result). A little note here, when messing around with some of the packages, I downloaded PLEX to try it as an alternative to Video Station, and while it ultimately didn't suit my needs, it did tell me that due to the low-power CPU on the device, it was unable to use the on-the-fly media encoding that PLEX does. Those who use PLEX might want to know about this. Conclusion: I have had only a few problems using the device, but after lots of googling, as far as I can tell none of them are within Synology's control. From HEVC playback in the HTML5 player the Video Station package uses, to Windows severing network connections while writing large files. For my use case, it's quite perfect. I wanted lots of storage, small form factor, and a well designed product, and I didn't mind the asking price. I thought it was a risky purchase from the start, but I'm totally sold now.