Synology DiskStation DS716+II 2-Bay SMB NAS Review

Usage: Synology Assistant & Mobile Apps

A NAS isn’t just pieces of hardware put together to serve a purpose, there’s also a software side to it. We’ve already seen a lot of DSM, but that isn’t all. You also get the Synology Assistant desktop app and a list of mobile apps.

Synology Assistant

The Synology Assistant application is more than just a NAS finder. While it does that, and also finds other Synology devices such as routers, it can do more. You can use it to install a new firmware directly, which is useful if the system is on another network and you don’t have direct access to the web interface. But you can also double-click a server to open the web interface or use the Assistant to map network drives or set up the Wake On LAN feature.

Mobile Companion Apps

Synology is my favourite NAS brand when it comes to companion apps for your mobile phone. Why? Because Synology supports all three major systems: iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile. I am loving my Windows mobile and will never trade it for something else again, and that makes Synology great. They are, at this time, the only NAS manufacturer that supports this mobile OS system with a full row of apps.

The DS Finder is the mobile equivalent of the desktop app that we looked at further up the page. With it, you can gain all the information about your Synology devices from your pocket.

Whether you want to check up on the available storage or network connections, the DS Finder does it for you.

All three of the Synology Multimedia apps also come with their respective mobile companion app. The DS Audio player connects to the Audio Station where it allows you to play music directly or stream it to a networked device.

It is a convenient way to stream and play all your stored music.

DS Photo is the companion app to the Photo Station, and it allows for a lot of the same features. You can browse all your albums and smart albums to find the photos you want.

With the DS Photo app, you can have your entire photo library in your pocket.

As you might have guessed already, we’re at the DS Video app which is the mobile version of Video Station. Browse all your media files and check up on their details in the same way that we saw in the Video Station earlier.

Hit play and you get your videos played directly on your phone.

File management is another important factor, and for this, we get DS file.

There are more mobile apps for Synology devices in your app store, for example, DS Get for the Download Station app.