Synology DiskStation DS1821+ NAS Review
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
The Synology DiskStation DS1821+ is an 8 bay NAS appliance that has all the features of a traditional SOHO (small office home office) and more. One of the great additions to the Synology storage line is the ability to add cache drives to increase transfer performance of throughput. In this particular NAS, I was able to use two m.2 NVMe drives for the cache. If you are running a Gigabit network and looking to implement a 10Gbe network and appliances, DS1821+ would be a great addition to any SOHO environment. By default, DS1821+ comes with four single Gigabit ports on the back of the unit, however with the use of an internal PCIe slot you can quickly upgrade your connections to 10Gbe. In my benchmarks, I used a Synology E10G21-F2 Dual Port SFP+ PCIe card with Transceivers by 10Gtek to achieve 10Gbps throughput speeds.
The internal hardware of DS1821+ has been well-engineered and the entire appliance is simple to operate. Synology DS1821+ is based on the AMD Ryzen CPU that is responsible for most of the stability of the entire appliance and its performance. During my testing and benchmarking I have not experienced any issues with the performance of the device or saw any bottlenecks. My benchmarks were performed with mechanical hard drives and based on the results of multiple tests it is clear that the performance of the drives in RAID modes offered the best throughput they could. With the recent release of Synology HDD, Synology has added another product to their lineup as it was long overdue. Synology is currently offering three 3.5″ HDD models (HAT5300-8T, HAT5300-12T, and HAT5300-16T), four 2.5″ SSD drive models (SAT5200-480G, SAT5200-960G, SAT5200-1920G, and SAT5200-3840G) along with two m.2 modules (SNV3400 and SNV3500) for caching. So if you are planning to purchase a NAS from Synology you can also purchase the drives from them as well.
The overall performance of the appliance is up to par with SOHO-type appliances with minimum noise levels. Rear fans of the device gently whisper the entire drive bay. Right now DS1821+ retails for about $ 950 USD for the diskless model. This might seem like a steep price but compare to some similar NAS devices with dedicated cache drives and AMD Syzen CPU out there DS1821+ has a very competitive price. I have been reviewing Synology devices for a very long time and just like most of the products by Synology DS1821+ does not disappoint. Great product, heavy on reliability and performance!
