Synology DiskStation DS418 4-Bay NAS Review

Bohs Hansen / 7 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of this review, Synology’s DiskStation DS418 4bay NAS is widely available. It can be yours on Amazon for £364.97 in the UK and $369.99 in the US. That’s a really fair price for such a device which probably explains why it’s also marked as Amazon’s Choice.

Final Thoughts

It is always a pleasure to review one of Synology’s NAS devices, and it was no different with the DiskStation DS418. The 4-bay NAS comes with everything you need, a little extra, but nothing that you don’t need. With that concept, the device manages a great price vs performance ratio.

With a quad-core processor and 2GB of DDR4 memory, there’s plenty of horsepowers to run a lot of features simultaneously without the DS418 breaking any sweats. The four drive bays allow for a lot of storage capacity too, considering we have 12TB drives widely available. If you still don’t have enough space, you could use the USB 3.0 ports for some more.

Performance

Good throughput in all aspects, if that still isn’t enough, you can link the two LAN ports for even better multi-tasking performance. The NAS can deliver over 220MB/s sequential reads, and 170MB/s writes. Even with encryption, you get a strong performance. That is, of course, due to the built-in hardware encryption engine. The impact is negligible – if there is any at all.

Easy File Access and Streaming

The DS418 lives up to being a NAS, in every single way. Whether you want to share files to Windows, MacOS, or Linux/Unix systems, you get it all. Whether we’re talking basic network file sharing or FTP and TFTP, you get it all and a little more.

The system, like most, comes with a self-signed SSL certificate. You can, of course, add your own ones too. The operating system also allows you to share your files with friends and family, and even strangers, all while you keep up the security. You can password protect your shares or set offer links to friends which expire after a given time.

Streaming your multimedia files could also be considered file sharing, in a way. The DS418 has everything you need for this too, including 4K multimedia streaming with H.265 hardware transcoding engine. You get Synology’s own very effective and feature-filled apps such as Video Station and Photo Station, but also third-party apps such as the highly popular Plex Server. There also are mobile companion apps for all three major mobile OS’, Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile. That means that you can stream your files to almost any device whether it’s your DLNA enabled TV, console, or other media-capable boxes, mobile devices, and much more.

Personal Cloud Solution and Built-in Office App

Public and commercial cloud offerings are great, and they’re naturally supported by Synology too. But you can turn your NAS into your own full cloud system too. All the apps and features for this are conveniently located in one part of the OS, making it easy to get a view off and figure out what you can do. You can easily backup to and from other servers, your personal systems, and mobile devices. It takes very little to set up, and it doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge either. A NAS isn’t something to be scared by, not anymore. The QuickConnect function also makes remote access easy with a name that stays the same, no matter what your IP does.

One feature that I truly love is the office system. With it, you can do work on documents and spreadsheets directly on your NAS. It works much in the same way as you might know from Google’s public offerings, except this one runs directly on your NAS. Stay in control of your own data! Not only that, but you can also collaborate on it all with your colleagues. That also includes a built-in chat feature, so you don’t have to rely on any outside function. Everything stays on your NAS where you are in control.