Western Digital (WD) produces the best hard drives and Synology produces the best prosumer Network Attached Storage (NAS). I have two NAS at home, both are from Synology and using WD hard drives.
My Synology DiskStation DS210j is on 2x WD Green 1TB running 24/7 since 2010 and my Synology DiskStation DS413j is on 4x WD Red 1TB running 24/7 since 2013. After all these years, both NAS and their hard drives did not give me a single problem at all.
The Asus RT-AC87U is the world’s first AC2400-class dual-band 802.11ac wireless router with a four-transmit, four-receive (4×4) antenna configuration. It is also the first in the world to employ multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) technology. It offers 5GHz speeds of 1.7334Gbit/s along with 2.4GHz speeds of 600Mbit/s for a combined total of 2.334Gbit/s. It comes with feature such as Asus AiRadar universal beamforming, adaptive Quality-of-Service (QoS) and AiProtection with exclusive Trend Micro security.
It was announced back in January 2014 at CES 2014 and it will finally be launching in Singapore at COMEX 2014. COMEX 2014 will take place at Level 4 and 6 of Suntec City Singapore from the Thursday, 28th August 2014 till Sunday, 31st August 2014. Opening hours are from 12pm till 9pm and admission is free. After COMEX 2014, you can get the router from all authorised Asus reseller like Challenger.
The Linksys WRT1900AC box got to be the biggest box for a router that I have received. When I opened the box, everything is held in place with foam instead of cardboard and there is sponge sticked to the top of the box to protect the router. I have not seen such premium packaging before for a router.
The Linksys WRT1900AC will be retailing for S$399 which makes it the most expensive consumer router that I come across. It is even more expensive than the Asus RT-AC68U. It will be exclusively available at all Challenger outlets from 22nd May 2014 (yesterday) to 22nd June 2014. After that, it will be available at all other leading IT stores in Singapore from 23 June 2014 onwards.
I was using the Huawei MiFi E585 which I bought 4 years ago till the battery life decided to give up on me. The battery will go flat after about an hour of usage. On top of that I am spoilt with 4G because the 3G speed is way too slow in Singapore, due to bandwidth congestion.
I wanted to get a 4G mobile wi-fi modem last year but it was still pretty expensive, but this year it seems the prices has drop quite a bit. I bought the Huawei E5372 4G Mobile Wi-Fi Modem from a reseller (romz1983) in HardwareZone Forums for S$230. If you are interested in getting it, check out the forum thread, WTS: Great MIFI sale from $90 Huawei E589 E5776 E5331 E5220 E5151 ZTE MF60 Wifi Router. He offers other models as well.
The D-Link DIR-868L Wireless AC 1750 Dual-Band Gigabit Router is retailing for S$319 (Challenger’s member’s price: S$279) which is pretty steep for a router. It is still cheaper than the Cisco Linksys EA6500 AC Router when it was first launched.
The DIR-868L is a draft IEEE 802.11ac router that supports simultaneous dual band (2.4GHz + 5GHz) and can give you speed up to 450Mbps + 1,300Mbps. It is also a “cloud router”, in the sense that you can access your router basic settings via mydlink Lite app on iOS or Android.
Asus launched the world smallest router last week measuring 6.5cm long and weighing 17.5g, the Asus WL-330NUL. It is available since 20th May 2013 for S$59.
The Asus WL-330NUL is a 4-in-1 router, it acts like a router, USB Ethernet adapter, Wireless adapter, and supports hot spot sharing!
In my first part review of the Synology DiskStation DS413j, I talked about the Unboxing and Setup, in the second part review, I talked about the Performance, Backup & CloudStation and for this last review, I will talk about the multimedia features of the DS413j and that includes Video Station, Audio Station and Photo Station as well as their mobile apps, DS Video, DS Audio and DS Photo+ respectively.
There are a lot of features in the Video/Audio/Photo Station, and hence for this review, I will focus on my personal use case; I want to access/stream my music/video/photos stored in my Synology NAS wherever I am on my iPhone or Android.
In the first part review of the Synology DiskStation DS413j, I talked about unboxing and setting up and in this second part review, I will talk about the performance, backup and CloudStation.
Performance
I am being seeded the Synology DiskStation DS413j alongside with 3x WD Red 1TB hard disk drives for a 3 part review. For the first part, I will talk about the unboxing and setting up of the DS413j.
Since I only have 3x WD Red 1TB and the DS413j is a 4-bay NAS, I went to Sim Lim Square to get another WD Red 1TB so as not to let 1 of the bay goes to waste. I didn’t realized that WD Red 1TB is a pretty old HDD and most of the stores carry 2TB onwards. Luckily Bizgram still has some WD Red 1TB left. So I bought it for S$120.
Western Digital is entering into the router market with the launch of 3 routers and 2 routers with built-in storage. These routers are priced pretty competitively!
I will be reviewing the My Net N900 which is retailing for S$239.
