For those craving higher throughput, the dual Gigabit LAN ports can be aggregated together. Multimedia capabilities The DS418play performed well, and had no issues streaming media to multiple devices at once. Transcoding worked flawlessly too, although it took a bit of fiddling to get Plex up and running. The DS418play happily maxed out our network with large file transfers, at 108.5 MB/s reading and 109.2 MB/s writing.

DS418 4 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure Synology 2GB DS418 4 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure

The 418play also offers hardware-based AES-NI encryption, and doesn't lose any appreciable performance with it's switched on. The DS418play is built around a now slightly dated Intel Celeron J3355 dual-core CPU, which can burst up to 2.5GHz. While the CPU does technically include Intel Graphics, there are no HDMI outputs. The NAS comes equipped with 2GB of RAM, plus an empty slot that can handle an additional 4GB, for a total of 6GB. While the NAS handles itself well with 2GB, it’s well worth the effort to add at least an extra 2GB. It’s also very easy – just pop out the drive bays and the RAM slot is easily accessible. Video surveillance - if you have a small business or a private property that needs to monitor several areas with surveillance cameras, you can use the DS418 to store their video footage, and access it whenever it is needed. With a full load of four drives, the throughput is mostly limited by the network connection itself. That won't be a problem for most typical users, as even two 4K streams won’t saturate the available bandwidth. That said, for more advanced users, having the option to aggregate the two network ports together is great. We tested the Synology DS418play equipped with 2GB of RAM, using 4x Seagate IronWolf Pro HDDs, and running Synology’s hybrid RAID. To emulate a typical network, we tested using a Gigabit Ethernet LAN, with connections running to the NAS, a desktop computer and Hisense smart TV.The key features of the DS418play all revolve around handling media. Most importantly, the device has the ability to transcode two 4K video streams at the same time. If you're wondering why exactly you might want to do that, or aren't already very into serving up your own media, then you probably don’t need this kind of feature. But as 4K video content becomes more popular, it could certainly be a great option to have for future-proofing. The Synology NAS operating system is one of our favourites, and it's well laid out and easy to use. While the hardware side is important, having a great user interface makes it much easier to get all the different features set up and working. Synology even has an online demo of its interface so you can try it out before buying at https://demo.synology.com/en-global. There is nothing to complain about in the performance offered by the Synology DiskStation DS418. The most meaningful impact on speed is going to be generated by the hard disks or SSDs that you install inside the NAS. If you desire maximum performance, you should also invest in fast storage. What is your opinion of the Synology DiskStation DS418? These are all satisfying speeds, for most users. However, the link aggregation did not deliver significant improvements when it comes to the maximum speed you get. Link aggregation is useful when multiple clients want to access data from the NAS at the same time, for load balancing and failover.

Synology DiskStation DS418 4 Bay All In One Quad Core NAS Enclosure - Scan Synology DiskStation DS418 4 Bay All In One Quad Core NAS

Four hot swap drive bays make it easy to populate the DS418play with either 3.5” or 2.5” drives. Setup & software Private cloud storage service - you get access to apps for all platforms, and you can create your version of Dropbox or OneDrive. We are big fans of the DSM platform available for the Synology DiskStation DS418. Setting up this NAS, and configuring it was pleasant and comfortable. The modular software is excellent and easy to use, and the user documentation is good enough to help you when required. How fast is Synology DiskStation DS418 at transferring data?