Last year's biggest scoring winner was Synology with an overall rating of 8.7 (on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the most satisfied). This year, Synology managed to improve on that, leaping up to a 9.1. In fact, the vendor got a 9.1 overall, plus a 9.1 for reliability, and a 9.0 for the likelihood to be recommended to colleagues. It's a stunning set of scores, and makes it clear that among PCMag readers (and editors!), Synology is almost impossible to beat.
"As you will probably have figured by now, I liked the DS414slim very much. It hides much more than meets the eye and will earn the respect of all users looking for such a small NAS unit. It may not offer ground-breaking performance, but its performance will suffice for normal use at home. If there were a performance-to-size ratio chart, this NAS would have been on top."
If you're looking for a simple NAS device to store files and nothing more, you can probably find cheaper solutions out there. If you want a device that will be the central multimedia hub for your entire house, in addition to storing files, then you can't go wrong with the DS414.
"DSM 5.x, in keeping up with the previous versions, is undoubtedly the gold standard to which all other NAS interfaces must measure up to."
"The whole idea of having my content in one central location that I can access, share, and stream from anywhere turned out to be everything I wished my experience with online cloud services could be. No worry about storage limits or monthly costs, no frustration with trying to share large files online, no need to move content around or deal with [other services], and no frustration with streaming my content on all my devices."
"Synology set itself apart from its competitors in 2012 when it won our first Readers' Choice Award in this category. This year it extended its lead, receiving extremely high satisfaction ratings across the board."
"The Synology DiskStation DS414 is a high capacity, affordable NAS targeted at SMB and consumers that offers plenty of performance for minimal investment."
The Synology RS10613xs+ is a 10-drive SAS/SATA storage system available in an all-flash configuration that delivers high-end performance at a remarkably reasonable price point.
As outlined in our expansion walkthrough on the DiskStation DS1812+ with the DX513 expansion unit, expanding the capacity of existing volumes or disk groups is very simple. Synology expansion options give everyone from a home or SOHO DiskStation to high performance SMB RackStations an option to scale up capacity in a seamless manner through DSM. From a management perspective, it can't get any easier than that.
Overall, my use of the Synology DS1813+ has been flawless and excellent. While I was never truly interested in having a NAS for a long while, I have to admit that in practice, having network attached storage is in fact awesome. As a photographer, the ability to access one’s entire archive of RAW files is a freeing and powerful feature.
For anyone looking for a big upgrade in space, I can wholeheartedly recommend the DS1813+ or any of Synology’s small business solutions
Once again, Synology raises the bar in the prosumer/SMB NAS space. The DS1813+ retains the hardware power of its predecessor, the DS1812+, with its excellent write and read speeds. The updated DiskStation Manager 4.3 interface is a storage joy.