Synology DiskStation DS918+ is Synology’s flagship 4-bay NAS for prosumers and it belongs to the Synology’s Plus Series of NAS.
Announced at Computex 2017 in July 2017 and released in October 2017, it is retailing for S$811 in Singapore at Fuwell.
My Synology DiskStation DS415play is starting to show it’s age when I tried streaming videos using the Plex app on my Apple TV 4K to my television.
Very often, it will show the error, “Your connection to the server is not fast enough to stream this video. Check your Network.“.
The Synology DiskStation DS216+ which was launched on 28th January 2016 is the successor to the Synology DiskStation DS215+. It is retailing in Singapore for S$499.
The DS216+ features a dual-core Intel CPU with AES NI hardware encryption engine, Btrfs file system support, and 4K UHD transcoding.
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.
I am a huge fan of WD Red Hard Drives and I am using 4 of them in my Synology DiskStation DS413j and they have not been giving me any problems so far.
WD Red hard drives are designed and extensively tested for compatibility under 24×7 operating environment and for the demanding system requirements of home and small office NAS.
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.
Bought the D-Link DNS-320 (S$109) and 2x Western Digital 3.5″ SATA Caviar Black 1TB hard drive (S$115 each) at Comex 2011 last weekend.
I still bought back a D-Link NAS after my bad experience with D-Link DNS-323 because the DNS-320 is meant for my mom’s office and D-Link service center is just located behind my mom’s office in case anything happens.
D-Link replied me after a week and a follow-up email from me. The normal repair price is US$61 (S$86) and after the repair is done, I will get an additional 3 months warranty.
However, out of good will, they are willing to give me 30% discount off the repair charges which is now US$42 (S$59) and an additional 3 months warranty, so that makes it 6 months warranty in total. They accept cash only and for some reason they do not quote in S$. Weird.
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