- Quick setup
- 4 bays for maximum storage
- Expandable memory
- Don't lose the keys!
- No eSATA port
Final Thoughts
The Synology DS418Play lives up to the rest of the Synology DiskStations I have looked at. Migrating data from my other DiskStations to the new one was scary at first, but Synology makes it really easy to to do. Hyper Backup allows you to create backups easily and effortlessly. This allowed to migrate not only the data over but my settings, all the applications and continuing using the new DS418Play without missing a beat.
The ability to add RAM without voiding the warranty is a wonderful feature. I could get by using the included 2GB of DDR3 RAM as the previous two units I have have 512MB and 256MB respectively, but being able to add an additional 4GB allows the device to be utilized even more, especially if I want to look at Synology’s Surveillance Station software in the future.
In terms of transcoding 4K video, I don’t actually have any 4K video to transcode, but I do have many 1080p videos that I stream to a PS4 or Roku that sometimes need to be transcoded into a format that can be easily played by Plex. I can play one movie on the PS4 at the same time one is being streamed to the Roku without having any issues. Not many people would stream multiple videos at the same time to different devices but it is nice to know the processing power on the DS418Play can handle it.
Saying something bad about the Synology DS418Play is not an easy thing to do. It does what it was designed to do and it does it well, especially for those who just want something to setup once and not need to tweak settings all the time. It happily runs and continues to do what it needs to do or what I want it to do. One small downside might be that if you were to lock your drives and lost your keys, you would have to either ask for new ones from Synology (do they even do that?) or break the lock mechanism to access the drives themselves.
Some people might miss having a lack of an eSATA port, though with USB 3.0 I don’t really see that as being an issue for most people. I happen to have an eSATA RAID enclosure but would rather use other USB 3.0 storage solutions to attach to the DS418Play if I needed to.
If you are a home user looking for a device that can help you keep things backed-up such as family photos across a variety of devices or need some network storage access that can grow with you, then the DS418Play is a great solution. Perhaps you are a small business that wants some digital storage space and some collaborative tools for multiple employees without having to purchase a large rack-mounted server. The DS418Play would be a nice fit too.
The Synology DS418Play can grow as your needs grow! It’s available now for about $430. You will naturally need to supply your own drives.