This was my first Synology device and had been thinking about replacing my decade old WD MyBook Live for about a year, when I heard this new model was coming I decided to wait for it to release. Not disappointed.
I've gone ahead of bought the Synology RAM to increase that to 6GB (I have read you can buy cheaper brands but won't get full warranty support), and I have installed the Plex server application. I am very impressed that this NAS easily handles streaming out three 4K HDR files at the same time, they were each about 35GB in size. This NAS and Fire TV Cube's are a match made in heaven.
It transcodes H264 content in Plex Server will incredible ease, I am getting transcode speeds of upto 35x. But do not mistake this with being able to transcode x265, some modern computers struggle with that let alone a NAS. x265 transcode speed comes in around 0.5x-1.0x so you will get buffering and artefacts. But if you play x265 directly then this NAS has absolutely no problem.... it was three x265 files that I referred to above to test playback of multiple, massive files at once. If you wanted to transcode x265 then you will need to do this as a background task and it will complete it in an hour.
I like the CloudSync app that comes from Synology themselves, I have that connected to my OneDrive accounts. It was very easy to do so and the app is fully compatible with Microsoft's 2FA security, meaning you don't have to relax your OneDrive security which is great. The CloudSync app also works with DropBox, GoogleDrive, AmazonDrive and a whole host of other cloud storage services.
There is also a basic P2P client as well so you will not need to download files to your computer and then move it to NAS drive, you can just do it directly on the NAS drive. Let's assume you are trying to download something that only has one seeder then your NAS will eventually get it because NAS drives are low power devices designed to run 24/7.
Transferring files between your devices at home is for most people restricted in speed by their network, this NAS has two Gigabit ethernet ports. The extreme majority of people will not have a router that can sustain that, with WD Red drives you can expect 120MB\s disk writes though. On that note Synology has a very handy SHR mode which will work like RAID but allows you to increase your disk space by replacing the drives (one drive at a time ofcourse!)
I highly recommend this product if this is your first dive into the NAS market.
| Brand | Synology |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Synology |
| Model number | DS220+ |
| Part Number | DS220+ |
| Computer Memory Type | 72-Pin EDO SIMM Memory |
| Hardware Interface | USB 3.0 |
| Batteries Included | No |
| Batteries Required | No |
| Data Transfer Rate | 1 Gigabits Per Second |
| Total Usb Ports | 2 |
| Product Dimensions | 23.2 x 10.8 x 16.5 cm; 1.3 Kilograms |
| Item Weight | 1.3 kg |
| Manufacturer | Synology |
| ASIN | B08BS4PW1B |
| Item Model Number | DS220+ |
| Date First Available | 9 September 2019 |
