How much performance matters depends on what type of NAS you want. If you're buying for business rather than home, this is the best package, and the same goes if you're more swayed by Synology's Google Drive-like features than Asustor and Qnap's media player skills.

Elegant design; Very quiet; Vast selection of apps

Slightly disappointing raw file-transfer performance

To be honest, its not cheap, but its a lot more than just a NAS. There is so much more this standalone device does, simply calling it a NAS is doing it a disservice. things I'm currently using it for or messing with include the following....

as describe

A few weeks back, launched an array of 12TB hard drives targeted a variety of market segments, from desktops to workstations and high-performance Network-Attached Servers. The Seagate o are fundamentally similar, but each drive is tuned for specific applications.

Massive Capacity; Strong Performance (For HDDs; Low Cost Per GB; Great Features; Easy To Setup And Use; Tons Of Plug Ins; Expandable

Pricey Overall; Slow Compared To SSDs; Limited by Gigabit Ethernet (Like Most Other SMB NAS Devices; Pricey

Synology has a range of network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures that cater to different segments, and while the two-bay DS218+ is a great way to get started if you're looking for an affordable home media server, the DS918+ has plenty more to offer.

Excellent performance; Dual 4K transcode; DSM is in a league of its own; 24/7 reliability

Pricey; No 10 GbE ports

In the market for a powerful turnkey NAS The general consensus is that a Synology ought to be near the top of your shopping list. The Taiwanese manufacturer has built an award-winning portfolio of network-attached storage devices, all of which are enhanced by a web-based DiskStation Manager (DSM)...

Excellent DSM operating system; Dual M.2 slots for easy SSD caching; Media transcoding with third-party apps; Simple expansion via optional DX517; Comprehensive app store; Three-year warranty

No option to upgrade to 10GbE; Plastic drive trays; Not the quietest

The major differences between the DS918+ and DS916+ are a newer CPU, more RAM, the two M.2 slots, and trays that feature locks on the newer model. Performance-wise, the DS918+ looks to be slower than its predecessor with real-life file transfers, which I can't explain since since both CPUs are of a...

Fairly good performance; Power consumption; DSM OS; Btrfs filesystem support; Two Gigabit Ethernet ports; Two M.2 NVMe 2280 slots; AES-NI hardware encryption engine; Quiet operation; Low HDD temperatures; Tool-less installation of HDDs; Support for up to forty camera licenses (comes with two free...

Vampire power (power consumption in standby mode) exceeds 0.5 W; Lacks an HDMI port; Plastic HDD trays are without anti-vibration materials and locks; Cannot skip disk checking during RAID 5 and RAID 6 setup; You cannot format an external disk into NTFS (and in our case; we couldn't access a disk we...

In our time with the DS918+, we really grew to appreciate what solid hardware and superb software can do. Both Synology's DSM and hardware have been incrementally improving over the years and its from this solid base that Synology have successfully ventured into Office collaboration and photographic...

World Backup Day is slowly creeping up on us. This year we will be celebrating this holiday on March 31st. The whole point of this holiday is to raise awareness of the importance of "Data" in our lives and ways we can protect it.

In the digital age, storage has become something of vital importance. However, it can't just be any storage, it needs to be fast, reliable, redundant and always accessible storage. Cloud storage can be great, it's often free (in limited quantities), it's convenient, it's accessible anywhere and it's...