Until now I've been using cheaper NAS devices but I have to say this is a significant step up in performance in every way. There were a couple of kinks to iron in the way DSM handles shared directories compared to the previous QNAP units but once that was understood it's been plain sailing ever since. If you want hardware transcoding of 4K media this is not the device for you but the CPU does handle 1080p transcoding okay. Having eight HDD's in one unit more than makes up for that in my books.

Using this as part of a small office setup for a video production business. We fully kitted this out with a 10GB Network card, 32GB ram and 8x 14TB Drives. It’s humming and working really well. Should be sorted for a while with storage. I like the apps Synology apps you can install in the DSM. We have activated remote access via Synology Drive app which is a nice personal cloud option for quick access.

I ran out of space on my DS920, so was looking for more capacity. Availability of the options was an issue. Luckily PB had the 1821 in stock. Transferring the disks from the 920 to the 1821, and it was up and running really quickly. I'm enjoying the added performance over the 920 (which wasn't slow). Super easy purchase from the team at PB.