Synology DS916+

POWERFUL AND EXTREMELY VERSATILE.

A HIGHLY VERSATILE NAS in the vein of QNAP and Asustor’s offerings, the Synology is built for people who want their NAS to do more than just serve files. There are dozens of server applications available for the platform, some from Synology, many from third parties. All these apps are managed in a full windowing interface built atop a version of Linux.

There are far too many apps to list here, but some of the standouts include arguably the best IP camera surveillance manager for NASs (with two licences included), a virtualisation station that lets you run other OSes on the NAS, a photo and video web gallery manager, a web server and content manager, a cloud-based word processor and spreadsheet (think Google Docs), a chat server, an email server, various backup and cloud tools, and a VPN server. And that’s just the beginning.

To go along with its excellent operating system, Synology has provided some very capable hardware. With a relatively powerful processor and up to 8GB of memory (we tested with 2GB), live transcoding and virtualisation are real options on this platform. It delivered excellent results in our tests and we found drive installation a breeze and noise from the huge twin fans surprisingly minimal. Like most of the NASs here, it has twin Ethernet ports for load balancing.

It’s a fantastic NAS overall, if perhaps a little bit pricey. It has excellent hardware, an elegant design and one of the best software suites around. Even its mobile apps are very good — not as good as Seagate or Netgear’s, but capable and easy enough to use.