Synology DiskStation DS716+ NAS Review

Final Thoughts
The Synology DiskStation DS716+ is the perfect NAS starting point for a small to medium size business. Under the hood you have a Intel Celeron N3150 quad-core processor and 2 GB of DDR3 memory. There are two drive bays for storage, but extra storage can also be added by the units USB 3.0 ports and eSATA port. The drive is seems more “solid” and rugged that the DS216+ we reviewed a little while back, which is good if you are going to be using the unit in more of an office setting rather than at home.

One feature that sets this unit apart from many dual-bay NAS devices is that it has dual Ethernet ports. This allows for failover and Link Aggregation support. This is a great thing to have when accessing your NAS is business-critical. The unit also features a Hardware Encryption Engine (AES-NI) and Hardware Transcoding Engine. This means that your data is protected and you can easily stream high-quality content to your mobile devices and tablets. I had no problem playing 4K video from the Video Station application in my browser or on my phone using the DS Video app. The video playback was smooth and there was no pausing or glitching.

When it comes to performance the DS716+ is one of the fastest NAS boxes we have tested this year! Sequential read and write speeds were well over 100 MB/s in most of our tests. In CrystalDiskMark specifically tests in all modes (SHR, JBOD, RAID0, RAID1) were all pretty much the same. This shows us that the only thing holding the DS716+ is the Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Being a Synology NAS the DS716+ is of course powered by their DiskStation Manager NAS OS, which not only is easy to setup, but is easy to use as well. You really do not even need to be a techy-type person to get the DS716+ up and running. Once everything is setup the DiskStation Manager software is much like an operating system and is very intuitive to use. DiskStation Manager also has many different packages you can install to add different functionality to the NAS.

This NAS has pretty much everything you would want for small business. Right now you can pick up the DS716+ at our favorite online retailer for $529. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Synology DiskStation DS716+ a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

Award 10 out of 10 Award Recommended

Pros:
– DiskStation Manager 6.0
– Easy setup and management
– Dual Ethernet ports
– Tool-less 3.5-inch hard drive installation
– Good performance
– Hardware Encryption Engine (AES-NI) and Hardware Transcoding Engine

Cons:
– None that we found

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