Synology DiskStation DS211j NAS Review

Conclusions

When taking into account all of what the DS211j offers, coupled with its actual performance, it can be a great addition to any home or office environment. Its biggest advantage is the fact that it’s so user-friendly to set up and manage. It also offers such a wide range of features, that the level of customization makes it equally appealing to both seasoned techies and late adopters, alike.

Some retailers sell the DS211j for about USD 199.99 without any hard disks installed, whereas the price can reach up to USD 399.99 with 2 TB of storage. This is pretty much in line with what other NAS boxes sell for, though you may be able to find a better deal by getting the unit diskless, and then buying the hard drives separately.

The good thing about the DS211j is that it doesn’t need a great deal of maintenance to keep it going. You set it up and it works for you, with automated features that can easily be turned on or off from anywhere in the home network or beyond, if you want remote access. So long as you have a 100 Mbps Gigabit network to share and stream files, you will likely be pleased with the level of performance here.

Strong Points

• User-friendly DiskStation web interface
• Expandable to 6 TB
• Offers an array of features suiting entertainment and business needs
• Good writing performance, with consistent reading performance
• Excellent support for Windows PC, Mac and Linux

Weak Points

• While hot-swappable, it’s too much work to actually get to the drives
• Media files have to go into default media folders to allow streaming
• Writing time is slower when large numbers of documents are being transferred
• User-friendly interface could better explain what some features are meant for