Synology DS1618+ 6-Bay High-Performance NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of this review, Synology’s DiskStation DS1618+ can be yours for $799.99 or £782.00 on Amazon.

Final Thoughts

What a NAS! Synology DiskStation DS1618+ is a NAS of my taste. It has all the right things to be the best at what it does: Store and serve your files. And while it doesn’t stop there, it doesn’t go beyond what it needs to do.

A Solid Base with Expansion Options

The DS1618+ has a powerful base system with great upgrade abilities. To start with, you can upgrade the RAM if you want to, but it does already come with 4GB included. A small downside is that it is in a single module which means you’ll need to upgrade to get dual-channel support. However, you can even install ECC memory in it. Which every type you chose, you have support for 32GB.

Memory upgrade-ability isn’t that uncommon, but the next part is. At least at this point in time. You can expand the unit with a PCIe add-in card to gain even more performance out of the unit. This can either be a dual M.2 SATA caching card or a 10GbE network card. Yes, there are other NAS on the market with this ability too, but they aren’t many yet. On to of that, you can increase the number of available drives with 10 more through the use of two external 5-bay enclosures.

Those are a lot of expansion options for an already great device!

Drive Setup and Performance

You get all the drive modes you’d expect from a 6-bay unit as well as Synology’s own SHR. The DS1618+ support the Btrfs file system too which comes with a lot of advantages. For example, you get up to 65,000 system-wide snapshots and 1,024 snapshots per shared folder.

I tested the NAS in a basic setup today, without any utilised expansions. Even in this “plain” form, it performs extremely well. However, if that isn’t enough for you, then that’s no problem. Add some caching if your file access is to slow or add a 10GbE NIC if your network can’t handle the load.

A NAS and OS made for Collaboration

There are a lot of collaboration tools out there where one of the best-known is Google’s solution. With Google Drive and their Spreadsheet and Document function, you can work from everywhere and collaborate with others. That’s the plus. The downside is that you aren’t in charge of your own files, how they’re stored and handled.

If you’re a Synology NAS owner, then you don’t need to worry about that. You get the same features, perhaps even more, and you stay in control of everything. The base is the Drive app from which you can share files. Then there’s the Office app on top with which you can create documents, spreadsheets, and slides. There’s even a chat client available. More basic tools such as a text editor is also available. Businesses will also appreciate the MailPlus function, which kind of explains itself.

Pros:

• Quad-core Intel CPU and 4GB RAM
• Upgradeable to 32GB DDR4 SODIMM (ECC and non-ECC)
• Upgradable with M.2 SATA caching or 10GbE add-in card
• Expandable with 10 more drives through eSATA
• Hardware encryption engine
• One of the best NAS operating systems you can get for businesses
• Btrfs file system
• Easy access to everything, whether for RAM upgrade or fan cleaning.

Cons:

• None what so ever!

“Synology’s DS1618+ is powerful enough for most, but there are plenty of upgrade-options when it isn’t. A perfect NAS for SMBs who want the best storage server for their files.”

Thank You, Synology, for this review sample.