KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
As with all Synology products reviewed to date, the product is presented in a plain black box with the logo across the sides.
Inside the DS211 is protected under a felt wrap with cardboard padding on both ends.
Inside there is a power cable and adapter, literature, mounting screws, sofware disc and RJ45 cable to connect to your network.
The DS211 is finished in cream and black with the Synology logo on the side panels. it is an attractively designed product.
The front panel has LEDs for drive and network activity and there is a USB 2.0 port with USB copy button and a power button at the bottom.
The rear offers connectivity for two more USB 2.0 devices with a gigabit lan connector along side. Underneath this is a reset button and the AC input. On the right is a safety lock, just below the centrally placed cooling fan.
The case is a screwless design, you simply pull backward on one half to open. This is all plastic construction.
Inside is a traditional design with a SATA daughtercard handling both power and data transfer duties for the attached drives. Behind the drives is a PWM 70mm fan which is hooked into the motherboard below.
The hardware specifications of the DS211 are higher than the DS411j we reviewed earlier this week. The CPU is running at 1.6ghz (from 1.2ghz) and there is double the memory onboard (256mb) which runs at 1066mhz, not 800mhz. The DS211 however can only handle a dual drive setup, so 4TB total. Synology don't yet support hard drives bigger than 2TB each, but we would assume in 2011 this will change.
Drives are added by simply sliding into the metal rackmount in the center. These are then screwed into the side panels for stability.
What a NAS system for the price ! wow this is going to sell well. those performance figures are high end systems of last year.
holy crap, if this is their new standard range for 2011, I wonder what the performance range will be like !
preordered this on dabs. thanks for the review. just want I need.
Wow these kind of performance figures are normally with products in the 500 price bracket. thats amazing. wonder if they will make a quad version at this speed for a bit more.
I love this company, they are breaking the rules. This will piss off other comapnies like QNAP and buffalo. you just dont get performance like this at the price they are offering. wicked. 10/10
Glad I waited, pre ordered this also.
Fascinating how they sell this for so low a price. the controllers at those speeds are generally expensive.
Really good, shame our local stores dont stock em, I like to see them in the flesh first.
Damn I just bought a buffalo nas and it sucks 🙁 wonder if I can take it back. its so damn slow.
wow, im stunned how good the performance of this is. I need a better network for it however. id be lucky to hit 20mb/s
My boss ordered 4 of these for the offices. very impressive product. I see the chipset is improved significantly. Fantastic pricing.
Please use ‘b’ for bits, and ‘B’ for bytes. Or better spell them out. That would make your charts and narratives much easier to follow. Thanks.
This seems like a good upgrade from their previous product, and prices are staying stable for the same grade of product. Could do with an esata port but thats really a quibble. How well do they cope with 4k format disks tho? they come in either 2tb 2.5tb or 3tb. Man one of these fitted out with a 2.5tb disk and a 4tb disk (thats me sweet for next 2.75years of projected Tv recordings) LOL
Synology have told me that they don’t yet support drives bigger than 2tb. But it is something that will be supported in the future.
No time frame on it yet, sorry.
Great review and very grateful that you tested the sound levels that the unit makes. It was one of my concerns with this product but the results of your dba testing have now sold me the unit. As I said great review and keep up the good work 🙂