The Synology DS218+ is (mostly) awesome!

[AstroTurf]

Here is my review of the DS218+
I'll be adding a few notes at the end as I have been using it for a while now.


The first thing to be done when receiving a new device is the unboxing, especially fun when the packaging has Mybroadband stickers all over it.



Once I got rid of the outer layer the actual packaging was both rugged and easy to open without tearing or breaking. I also repackaged it several times. This is great if you plan to move it around or test it in different environments.





The casing is made of ABS, this does not do well in very warm environments or with constant heat applied to it but due to all the ventilation on the casing as well as the very generous fan on the back it should not be a problem for this device, unless you put it into an enclosed space…

I put a torch inside the case to show how cleverly they used the logo for ventilation.



Upgrading the ram is easy to do and, as can be seen in the background, one fan is plenty to keep this device cool. It also runs practically silent.





Installing drives into the device is an absolute breeze as you need only your hands to do so. Everything is secured using plastic clips and rubber grommets so you simply have to pull the front cover off, unclip a bay, remove the hard drive clips, put the hard drive in and reverse the procedure. Of course this means that my four year old son who loves to disassemble anything he can must never be allowed near this NAS! He will have the drives out in under 5 minutes.

 

[AstroTurf]

The initial setup is really simple. You start up the NAS, wait for it to beep then go to http://find.synology.com and a web assistant comes up. 10 steps later and you are good to go.



I played a UHD movie (around a 50GB file) on two devices and ended up with it hanging on the 2nd device after a few seconds, however, when I did the same with two separate movies I had no issues. When I played the same file on my own pc and on my Fire TV cube at the same time while letting my kids play a different movie on another computer I had no issues. Just to add to the load, I tried it on my Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge as well without an issue. I tried my original test again and it worked without an issue so I am guessing it was just a random glitch.

 

[AstroTurf]

The device’s interface takes a little getting used to and uploading large files to it via a web browser can be tedious. It took several hours for me to upload all the files I used during this test and I used a 1Gbps connection as well as an Ethernet over power connection to do so (I also did a test over wifi).



I initially tried putting drives into the NAS that already had data on them, I was however disappointed to find that any data already on the drives would be deleted and ended up having to use different drives for this test.

This is not a bad thing as after looking through the package centre I realised that I seriously underestimated this device’s capabilities and I want to spend the next few weeks going through all the possibilities for both work and play.

 

[Soul Assassin]

What are those images, my eyes.

 

[AstroTurf]

What are those images, my eyes.

Copy and paste from word, I'll dig out the originals and replace them when I get a chance.

 

[SauRoNZA]

So the + definitely seems well worth it over the regular version.

 

[AstroTurf]

Quick update after several months of using it as a media server.

Only two issues I have with it...

1. DS Video does not support DTS, there are workarounds for this but they require installing 3'rd party ffmpeg and using a very old version of ds video.

2. A common problem with the device is that if it experiences a power outage it may refuse to let you connect to the device. The solution to this is resetting the device and reinstalling it's os. It is not hard to do but does use some time and bandwidth, you also lose your video database and have to get it back, this uses more data...