Synology DiskStation DS918+ 4-bay NAS Review

Rating: 8.5.

Synology's latest 4-bay addition to the Plus series of NAS devices aimed at high performance and data-intensive workloads is the DS918+, a refresh of the DS916+ which launched in 2016 and which we reviewed HERE.

Powered by an Intel Celeron J3455 processor clocked at 1.5GHz (burst up to 2.3GHz) the DiskStation DS918+ is offered in two memory options, the entry level 4GB version (the model Synology submitted for review) or the flagship 8GB model. 8GB is the maximum supported memory quoted on the spec sheet. The 4GB entry-level model has one of the two SO-DIMM slots left empty, so at least you upgrade the memory should you need to.

It has an AES-NI hardware encryption engine and a hardware-accelerated transcoding engine which supports the transcoding of two channels of H.265/H.264 4K videos at the same time. Its supports H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), MPEG-2 and VC-1 formats at a maximum resolution of 4096 x 2160 (4K) at 30fps.

Synology quote Sequential throughput performance for the DS918+ as up to 226MB/s for reads and 222MB/s for writes although a point of caution here, those figures are with both LAN ports being used in Link Aggregation mode.

Synology back the DS918+ with a 3-year warranty.

Specifications
64-bit 1.5GHz (2.3GHz) CPU
4GB DDR3L
Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports (Link Aggregation / Failover support)
Dual M.2 NVMe slots

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