Synology DiskStation DS216+ Dual Bay NAS Review

Looking to update your NAS with something a bit more powerful without breaking than bank? Looking to get into the NAS market with a solution that will be able to keep up to your home or small business needs for a while? Are you interested in 4K video while being able to transcode it on-the-fly and stream it to the various 1080p TVs around your home? Perhaps Synology has a solution for you. Introducing their DiskStation DS216+ Network Attached Storage solution.

Features and Specifications

The Synology DiskStation DS216+ is a dual-bay Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution, though these units are usually a bit more than just a NAS these days and are typically fully functional servers with a very small footprint. The Synology Diskstation DS216+ sports a dual-core Intel Celeron N3050 SoC running at 1.6GHz with a burst speed of 2.16 GHz which should keep most home users with plenty of horsepower for their typical needs.

• Intel Celeron N3050 SoC 1.6GHz (64-bit)
• Hardware Encryption Engine (AES-NI)
• Hardware Transcoding Engine
• 1 GB DDR3
• 2 Drive Bays capable of 16TB total (8TB x 2)
• 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 USB 3.0 port
• eSata port
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Power Consumption: 17.57W (Access) 7.52W (HDD Hibernation)

What’s In The Box?

There is not much that was included in the box and the box that the unit came in was not the regular retail one either. Though this is what was found to be included:

• DiskStation DS216+
• AC Adapter
• Quickstart Guide

Typically, the DiskStation units do not come with drives as it’s up to the end user to determine what drives and size of drives they wish to use. Though, if you do not want the hassle of sourcing your own drives, then Synology does have a solution under the Beyond Cloud product line.

First Impressions

We have looked at Synology devices before, such as the Synology BeyondCloud Mirror (DS216se) which we will use a a comparison to the DS216+.

The Synology DiskStation DS216+ features a similar enclosure as the DS216se, though black in colour, it will fit esthetically among a home or small business environment without drawing too much attention to.

The front of the DS216+ as the status LEDs, USB3.0 port, the USBCopy button as well as the power button. The LEDs show you system activity, activity of the network to the DS216+ as well as any disk activity that may be going on at the time. When the hard drives go into hibernation mode, the LEDs will turn off.

The front panel is also removable without much fuss as it is held in place by 4 rubber grommets. Once you have removed the panel, you have easy access to the 2 drive bays. Both drives are enclosed with their own easy to install, tool-less hot-swappable SATA cage. The cages support 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch drives as well, so if you want to use SSDs instead of regular mechanical drives, you are able to without having to modify anything. To remove either drive, you push the small tab at the top in which pops the drive out. Slide the drive out along its rail and you can easily slide it back in when needed to.

Around to the back of the DS216+ you can see the 92mm exhaust fan, Gigabit Ethernet port, eSATA port, the 2 USB 2.0 ports and of course the 12V power input. It would have been nice to include USB 3.0 ports in the back instead of USB 2.0 but if they want to keep the cost down a little bit, perhaps that is the decision to exclude USB 3.0 on the back.