Hands on: Synology Diskstation DS224+ Review
This review first appeared in issue 358 PC Professional Edition.
At first glance, Synology’s DiskStation DS224+ looks cheap DiskStation DS223. It’s the same color and size, and has the same button, port, and LED layout on the front panel. However, take a closer look and you’ll notice a significant improvement: this NAS has dual 1GbE ports, It can be used to provide faster throughput and failover support.
The DS224+ has a bigger upgrade inside, Intel Celeron J4125 processor Not the feeble Realtek in the DS223. Its 2GB of memory can also be upgraded to 6GB via a spare slot, which can be accessed without tools if the drive cage is removed. Synology says the DS224+ offers enhanced performance compared to the previous generation device, and if you plan on using it as a home media server, this processor will definitely help.
Setting up a Synology device is generally easy, and the DS224+ comes with a tool-less bay for a 3.5-inch SATA drive—like other contenders here, you need to screw in a 2.5-inch disk. You can quickly find any local DiskStation through Web Assistant. Once you enter the web interface, installing Synology’s DSM software and configuring storage becomes very simple.
We added two 4TB disks from Synology, configured them as a RAID1 array and formatted them using Btrfs or EXT4 if needed. The DS224+ offers improved specifications, surpassing the DS223 in 4KB and 16KB file operations on the ATTO disk benchmark. In our Windows file copy test, writing files was also a bit faster, at 60MB/sec compared to the DS223’s 52MB/sec.
This somewhat distracts from the fact that this NAS is limited by the Gigabit Ethernet ports. In our tests, it had a maximum transfer speed of 113MB/sec. In comparison, a 2.5GbE connection has transfer speeds of up to 283MB/sec. It’s easy to bond two network interfaces, but this won’t increase speed for a single client; instead, it helps increase bandwidth when there are multiple users.
Synology is positioning this NAS as a data storage device for edge deployments, which could mean domestic worker and micro offices. Synology’s software certainly fills this role, combining a solid feature set with 107 apps available in Package Center. For home workers who connect primarily via Wi-Fi, perhaps this NAS’s slower Ethernet won’t be an issue, but if you have multiple users, we recommend paying more for an alternative with a 2.5GbE interface plan.
