Synology DS1618+ NAS
A high powered yet flexible NAS for prosumers or small business owners.
Aimed at those who need large but fast storage capacity at an affordable price (think video or picture editing), the Synology DS118+ offers a lot of functionality for the $1,200 price tag.
At its core is the efficient 14nm Intel Atom C3538 CPU that offers four cores that can boost up to 2.1GHz, plus 4GB of DDR4 RAM. It’s dual channel, too, for extra performance, can be upgraded to 32GB or swapped out for ECC memory instead. Round the back the NAS has four Gigabit LAN ports, which support both link aggregation and failover support. You also get three USB 3.0 ports (one of which is on the front) and two eSATA connection for adding external drives, or even a Wi-Fi adaptor. Using the Synology DX517 expansion units, it’s possible to reach a total of 224TB of storage.
But the real standout feature of the DS1618+ is the PCIe expansion slot, which allows for some handy upgrades. Most usefully, you can drop in a 10 Gigabit Ethernet card ($250), for very high performance file transfers. For those who need fast random access speeds, you can add an SSD adapter card – either supporting M.2 SATA drives only ($225), or both SATA and the faster M.2 NVMe SSDs ($250).
Like most modern NAS, getting the Synology DS1618+ spooled up and running is very easy thanks to tool-less drive bays, a quickstart guide and a wizard that walks you through the process. We opted for the Synology Hybrid RAID system, which is a good mix between redundancy and storage capacity, and is well equipped to handle a mix of drives, and future upgrades. If you use Seagate IronWolf drives (as tested), you can directly monitor drive health and stats from the NAS interface, using Seagate IronWolf Health Management. During testing the DS1618+ happily maxed out the throughput of a single Gigabit network connection (113.2 MB/s reading, 111.7 MB/s writing) for large file copies. Maximum speeds with 10 Gigabit Ethernet depend on your RAID and network setups, but transfer rates of 1000 MB/s+ are typical. Under heavier load the 92mm fans can be a bit noisy, so you don’t want the DS1618+ too close to your workspace.
On the software side, the DS1618+ has an extremely comprehensive and flexible backup solution, plus oodles of security options baked in. You can also easily share and manage files, including creating a personal cloud. The NAS can also run a VPN server, host email or support recording from up to 40 IP cameras. It’s also DLNA streaming ready and supports 1080P transcoding. Not to mention Synology have over 100 add-on apps available, making it very easy to add the extra functionality you need.
The DS1618+ ability to run a virtual machine, including another copy of the NAS DSM or Linux or Windows. This is a great option for experimenting with operating systems, or running specific software. No more than four at once is recommended, and of course you’ll want to upgrade the RAM first.
All in all, the DS1618+ happily outperforms our expectations considering the relatively affordable price, and has plenty of scope for future upgrades.