Synology DS415Play 4-Bay NAS Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Since its launch, the DS214Play’s £247 price tag has barely shifted and whilst its price does push it towards the premium end of the market, the cost is very justifiable thanks to its transcoding capabilities and strong levels of performance across the board. Naturally the DS415Play is also going to demand a slightly higher price tag over a mainstream 4-bay system with prices starting around £372 to be expected. Just remember that you get what you pay for – if media content and playback is your primary use for a NAS then you are getting a system that is just right for the job.

Overview

When the DS214Play came out (My review of this can be found here), the addition of a CPU that can transcode media on the fly for mobile devices set it apart above many other 2-bay systems that performed around the same level and offered similar connectivity options and once again this is the key feature that the DS415Play has to offer. As home users look for ways to store their films, TV shows and music into a central location, the use of mobile devices is also on the increase – naturally this makes the DS214Play and the new DS415Play great candidates for this area of the market.

Performance wise the DS415Play in our tests gave us more than we expected with write speeds that were far ahead of those quoted by Synology, topping out at over 124MB/s. The read speeds were also able to push past those quoted as well, although we don’t get such a distinctive margin here. RAID build times were also very impressive. Typically RAID1 and RAID 10 built times take the most time to complete as they sync each pair of drive(s) perfectly in order to give the full mirror copy that is expected. Surprisingly though I saw a RAID1 build time of no more than 20 minutes with our WD Se Enterprise drives – around 15 minutes faster than the rough average that I tend to see on other systems.

As far as connectivity goes, Synology have given a reason for the drop of the SD card reader that the DS214Play features. The drop of the reader simply allows Synology to include another USB port on the rear of the system where users can connect a care reader if they so wish. If the card reader was to be present the number of USB ports that are available overall would be reduced by one. Simply put, if you want to have a card reader, connect one to a USB port – if you don’t then you don’t have a wasted feature. Additionally I will also once again urge Synology to include a HDMI port as part of the system spec. If you’re going to build a system that is aimed directly for a/v storage in the home, giving direct media playback capabilities would be somewhat logical in my eyes.

Rounding this system off, I knew from the moment that I got this system out of the box and setup in the lab that I was not going to be disappointed. The lack of an option to connect  a display to the system to give direct media playback is a little confusing – considering this is a unit designed for serving media content, however the performance and ability to transcode media on the fly is what will make this system such a popular option in the SOHO market (if the sales trend of the DS214Play is anything to go by).

Pros:

• On-the-fly hardware media transcoding for mobile devices
• Fast read and write speeds
• Sleek black design and tool-free setup
• On of the most intuitive user interfaces on the market

Cons:

• SD card reader has been dropped from the DS214Play’s specification
• Long term running cost is slightly higher than average for a 4-bay SOHO NAS
• No direct media playback option

“Following the huge success that the DS214Play has given Synology, this 4-bay offering inherently has a high set of expectations to stand up to. Suffice to say it does not disappoint with fast speeds, hardware transcoding and a great GUI – the DS415Play could be one of this years best NAS products in the SOHO market.”

Thanks to Synology UK for providing us with this review sample.