Synology DiskStation DS416slim review

Sitting under Synology's J series banner, the DiskStation DS416Slim is aimed at home and personal use but could also be used in a small office environment where the data flow isn't particularly high. It's an ideal NAS for those who won't need vast quantities of storage capacity now or in the foreseeable future or who don't need a high-performance unit.

It's the smallest tower format NAS we have seen to date but despite its small size, the DS416Slim is a capable NAS. With its 1GHz CPU and 512MB of memory it won't break any speed records but for everyday use its fine and with its dedicated encryption engine dual Ethernet ports (supporting Link Aggregation) and a pair of USB3.0 ports it has a better feature list than some units twice its size.

Performance wise the low powered CPU and smallish amount of cache did show its self in some of out tests as the DS416Slim ran out of steam particularly when dealing with a lot of small bity files. In some of our tests we found that in RAID 5 and RAID 6 the performance dropped off quite significantly regardless of the type of disk being used.

While it may not be the fastest NAS around, Synology's DiskStation Manager OS makes it a very capable one for either home or office use in a number of guises. For example using the Surveillance Station app you can turn the DS416Slim into the hub of a web-based IP camera surveillance center with the ability to remotely monitor it with a mobile device.

We found the DS416Slim on Ebuyer for £238.98 inc VAT HERE

Pros

• Very small size.
• DSM OS.

Cons

• Limited capacity.
• It's no speed demon.

KitGuru says: The smallest 4-bay tower NAS we have seen. It may be small in stature but its still a pretty capable NAS.

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