Synology DS1522+ NAS – Should You Buy?

Synology DS1522+ NAS Drive – Should You Buy It?

Should the DS1522+ NAS from Synology be your next big tech purchase? With such a wide range of private server solutions on the market, it’s never been a better time to be a NAS buyer, looking to move your data away from a public cloud provider, or even to run them side-by-side as a 2-tier backup solution for your home or business needs! Synology has a tremendously diverse range of NAS solutions, but with the previous generation(s) of solutions in their portfolio now appearing on offer, as well as available at discount at 2nd hand eTailers – does the DS1522+ deserve your data? We already made a massive review on the Synology DS1522+ NAS HERE, but today I want to hit the Pros and Cons head-on and help you decide much quicker on whether this NAS is for you.

5 Reasons the Synology DS1522+ is a Good NAS for You

So, first up, let’s discuss the high points! Here are the five reasons why the Synology DS1522+ NAS drive deserves your money and your data!

Note – if you are in a hurry, you can watch my ‘Synology DS1522+ – Before You Buy’ video HERE.

#1 – Runs Pretty Much EVERYTHING in Synology DSM

At Launch, the DS1522+ NAS arrives with the latest version of Synology software, DSM 7.1. However, this does not stop evolving as soon as you get your Synology NAS. DSM has been in continues to be the dominant force in the world of NAS software, providing a massive arrangement of services, applications (first and third-party supported) and a huge number of client applications for desktop, mobile, Windows, macOS and Linux (as well as a bunch of other more home-based tools). These allow management and access to the data on the DS1522+ in very tailored ways, as well as the web browser-based access that has the appearance, intuitive design and responsiveness of a local operating system. The DSM interface can be accessed by hundreds of users at the same time (with each user having tailored access, rights and privileges). DSM is available with ALL Synology NAS and the depth and abilities of DSM on any NAS are dependent on the hardware architecture of the NAS itself. In the case of the Synology DS1522+, it supports EVERYTHING that is offered by Synology’s platform. DSM is currently in version 7.1, but it looks like we will be seeing full release of DSM 7.2 at the end of 2022 or the start of 2023, which will be adding WORM (write Once Read Many) support, Volume scale encryption and numerous improvements to individual applications. If you want to learn about it, you can read the DSM 7 Full Review HERE.

As mentioned, the DS1522+ supports pretty much the entirety of the DSM 7.1 applications and services (DSM 7 and DSM 6.2 are still in circulation and still receive regular service and security updates, though the DS1522+ will arrive with DSM 7.1 by default and cannot be rolled back). If you are an existing user of SaaS and PaaS (Software as a service and Platform as a service) from the likes of Google Workspace and Office 365, knowing that you can synchronize these systems or choose to export away from them onto the Synology services is going to be very appealing. Then there is the increasing development of their 1st party cloud platform, Synology C2, which is slowly integrating into all the applications that are available on your bare metal NAS (allowing you to add a cloud layer of backup, synchronization and access to your data storage setup). This is a subscription platform, which can only be used with your Synology NAS system (as well as connected with some 3rd party SaaS services, but for those that are moving away from Google/Microsoft/AWS for security reasons, but still want a Cloud+Metal storage network in place, C2 covers pretty much everything. Indeed, although below I have highlighted a number of the key/best applications that are included in your DS1522+ Service with DSM, most of them can be immediately integrated with Synology C2  (with even more being added in 2023 with DSM 7.2). Key business and consumer applications that are included with your NAS are:

You cannot really fault the software and services that are included with the Synology DS1522+ NAS, as you are going to get the very best experience available on the platform, thanks to the hardware and architecture of this NAS. DSM 7 is an ever-evolving platform, so if you are reading this now at the time of publishing or years later, there is always going to be something in DSM for everyone.

#2 – Support of SHR, BTRFS and Snapshots

The architecture of the DS1522+ is more than enough to allow you to choose EXT4 or BTRFS as the system’s file system, with the latter providing several benefits in terms of resource impact of snapshot creation and file integrity checks. Then there is the support of SHR. Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) is a type of RAID storage technology that is designed to provide flexibility, scalability, and advanced data protection. It allows you to use different sizes and types of hard drives to create a storage pool and adapts to the differences between the drives automatically. Unlike traditional RAID, which only allows you to utilize hard drives of the same size and type, SHR allows you to mix and match different sizes and types of drives to create a storage pool. It also automatically adjusts the storage configuration to ensure data integrity and optimize storage utilization. Additionally, SHR provides data redundancy with an error-correction algorithm with mixed drive use that is more advanced than traditional RAID. This means that it can protect your data even if one of the drives fails.

Synology’s BTRFS offers many advantages over the traditional EXT4 filesystem, such as increased storage space and data availability, as well as the ability to take frequent and scheduled backups. Snapshots are a major benefit of using BTRFS, as they allow you to easily take instant snapshots of an entire shared folder and clone it easily. This ensures data consistency and integrity, as well as the ability to recover from a hard drive failure or damage. The main advantage of using BTRFS is that it enables you to keep a schedule of hourly, daily, weekly and monthly snapshots. Although the DS1522+ NAS is not the first Synology NAS to allow BTRFS, Snapshot Replication and supporting SHR, it is still good that this is included in this compact package.

#3 – Wide Support/Compatibility of 3rd Party HDDs

Unlike a number of higher profile (i.e more powerful and expensive) NAS systems in the Synology NAS portfolio that have much stricter supported official HDD and SSD compatibility/support, the Synology DS1522+ supports pretty much everything you would expect! As long as it is SATA and 2.5/3.5″ – they will almost certainly appear on the SYnology compatibility lists. There is still talk of Synology releasing a standard class range of HDDs (to accompany their existing enterprise HDDs and SSD media), but if/when they do, they will likely always allow competitor 3rd party HDDs in the WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf NAS drive series to be used on value series NAS like the DS1522+. They DO only support upto 18TB at the time of writing across all supported HDD brands, likely down to Synology’s own drives currently capping at 18TB, but most buyers of the Synology Diskstation PlusNAS systems like this one were far less likely to install HDDs of this scale!

All that said, do keep in mind that the Hard Drives that you choose to use will make an impact on noise. Any NAS HDDs (WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf) of 8TB or lower capacity will be lovely and quiet (only really making noticeable noise in periods of high access frequency), but larger capacity HDDs or enterprise class/industrial built Hard Disks will make more ambient noise (vibration hum, clicks of the internal arm/actuator and spinning disk platters) and these will be easily noisier than the DS1522+ noise when in operation.

#4 – You Can Upgrade towards 10GbE

This was a feature in one form or another that users who have been looking at the expandable 4-Bay and 5-Bay diskstation series (DS918+, DS1019+, DS920+ and DS1520+) have been requesting for YEARS! The Synology DS1522+ NAS arrives with an upgrade slot on the rear of the chassis (PCIe Gen 3 x2) that allows the installation of a 10GbE (10GBASE-T) network upgrade module that allows the system to upgrade towards a 1,000MB/s network connection! With the DS1522+ NAS running on a very competent and fast-file-service internal architecture AND supporting upto 4 drives in a RAID environment to increase internal performance, the option to scale up the external connectivity to 10x that of traditional gigabit is fantastic.

The network upgrade option on the DS1522+ is delivered via an optional purchase of the Synology E10G22-T1-mini (find the Synology E10G22-T1-MINI here on Amazon), and it is a 1x Port 10G card, with its own onboard controller and heatsink attached. The module is also by far the easiest 10GbE/Network upgrade I have ever installed in a NAS, as it can be installed by popping it in the available slot on the back – as opposed to needing the chassis be partially dismantled in order to access a PCIe slot). The PCIe Gen 3×2 bandwidth that is afforded to it is more than enough for the 10G connection it provides and the 4x SATA drives inside do provide enough throughput to largely saturate the connection (and that is without factoring in the M.2 NVMe SSD bays)

Currently, the E10G22-T1-mini is the only upgrade option that is supported by the network upgrade slot on the DS1522+ NAS (as well as the DS723+, RS422+ and DS1522+), but I would not be surprised if Synology roll out an SFP+/Fibre option in due course, though the jury is still out if they were to also add a 2.5G/5GBe option.

#5 – Day 1 8GB ECC DDR4 Memory, Upgradable to 32GB

Another one of the benchmarks of the expandable 5-Bay diskstation hardware that the DS1522+ goes ahead and smashes is in the area of Memory. Previous generations of this series have arrived with 4-8GB of Memory which cannot be upgraded further (in some cases, with the initial 4GB of memory being soldered to the main controller board). The DS1522+ NAS mixes things up by providing the same amount of memory at 8GB, BUT it can support upto 32GB of memory across two SODIMM slots! that is FOUR TIMES the maximum of the DS1520+, twice the base memory of the DS1522+ and FOUR TIMES that of the DS723+ –  that is going to allow ALOT of apps to stretch their muscles a bit with that much RAM to share out!

Moreover, this memory in the DS1522+ improves further on its predecessors by virtue of being ECC memory (Error Correcting Code), something that you would normally only ever find on a highly enterprise server. ECC memory arrives with an extra memory chip per module on board that (in caveman terms) allows the system to have a blueprint of the data that is passing through the memory on the way to being written/sent to the disks and then, at the end of the memory processes, it is compared against the blueprint and if errors/inconsistencies are observed, the memory repairs the data. ECC has always been proven invaluable at the business level as it ensures data that has been stored on the NAS for warm or cold storage has no silent inconsistencies that down the line could result in invalid/corrupt data (e.g bitrot).

The DS1522+ NAS featuring ECC memory DOES mean that official Synology memory upgrades are going to be more expensive, but the RRP of the DS1522+ NAS (with the original 8GB of ECC Memory) already arrives at a very, very similar price point to its predecessor’s RRP when they were released, so any extra cost down the line is optional.

5 Reasons the Synology DS1522+ Might NOT Be the NAS for You

Nothing is perfect, right? For all of the positives that I have highlighted above, the DS1522+ is still not a perfect Synology NAS solution. Here are five reasons why you might want to give the Synology DS1522+ NAS drive a miss, opt for an alternative brand or go for a lower-priced predecessor.

#1 – 1GbE Default Network Ports

Those ethernet ports. The default model of the DS1522+ NAS arrives with FOUR gigabit ethernet ports (the same as the DS1520+ before it), despite almost other commercial NAS brand-producing solutions at this consumer-tier/scale arriving with at least 2.5GbE. Now, the adoption of greater than gigabit connectivity in client hardware (laptops, PCs, routers, switches, docking stations, etc) is by no means as ubiquitous as 1GbE (which has been around for decades at this point), BUT it is growing. ISPs are providing fiber internet connections globally that exceed gigabit speeds, along with 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 routers.

We are seeing more prosumer switches, routers and PCs with default 2.5Gb network ports (at the same/similar cost as 1GbE), $20 USB-to-2.5G adapters and even the affordability of 10GbE on some client devices has allowed users to gradually scale up their hardware environment. The fact the DS1522+ arrives at the tail end of 2022 and does not feature greater than 1GbE ports by default is quite damning. Even if you have no plans for 2.5G right now in your setup and think it something of a fad (favouring 10GbE), in terms of future-proofing and the general standard or networking hardware right now, gigabit ethernet is a surprising weakness here.

#2 – NVMe SSD Bays are for Caching Only (DSM 7.1)

IMPORTANT – In the recent DSM 7.2 Beta release, the Synology DS1522+ CAN use the M.2 NVMe SSD Bays as Storage Pools. However, as the software update will likely remain in beta for a few more months and there is a question surrounding the downgrading of PCIe lanes, I am leaving this ‘con’ point here for now. At least till the DSM 7.2 update is fully rolled out and stable.

Alongside the five SATA bays of storage, the DS1522+ also features two rather useful m.2 NVMe SSD bays that allow you to install superfast m.2 PCIe performance storage drives into this modest-sized system. These bays are ventilated and allow for additional heatsinks to be attached to SSDs inside. Synology has been a keen supporter and innovator of SSD caching in storage servers. Its benefits and improvements via the many different types of SSD cache that are possible to improve the overall access and performance to the primary storage in a number of ways and I’m glad to see Synology continuing with this feature here.

It is worth highlighting though that Synology continue with their strict use of these bays for SSD cache only and does not allow their use as independent storage pools and volume creation in DSM 7.1. Now that their use as Storage Pools is arriving in DSM 7.2, this will certainly please a number of existing DS1522+ NAS owners who felt snubbed when this feature arrived in the DS923+ at the end of 2022 by default. However, it is worth highlighting that it is most likely that these bays will be downgraded from PCIe Gen 3×4 to 3×1, as seen in the DS923+ and DS1823xs+ (see below from the DS923+

It is also worth noticing that only Synology branded SSDs are listed as supporting this feature right now – so if you are currently using Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red SSDs in your system, these cannot be used as Storage Pools in DSM 7.2 on the DS1522+

#3 – CPU Divides Opinion as it Does Not Feature Integrated Graphics

The CPU inside the DS1522+ is the AMD Embedded Ryzen R1600 processor, an x86 64bit Dual core, four-thread processor with an impressive base level clock speed of 2.6Ghz that can be scaled up to 3.1Ghz when needed. Now, the DS9xx+ series has always arrived with a Quad Core Intel Celeron (or Pentium) processor in the past and when it was revealed that the DS1522+ was arriving with a dual-core embedded ryzen, many users were a little unhappy. This was largely down to two factors. The first was that the R1600 is a dual-core, not the four-core that everyone expected. Now the R1600’s four-thread architecture does allow the CPU to spread out quite alot across tasks and services (as well as virtual CPUs in VM deployment), as well as having a higher power in both base and burst mode available, which means it isn’t a bad CPU! But the bigger area of contention from some buyers is that the R1600 lacks integrated graphics. This means that for some tasks and services that are more graphical in nature, the result will be a higher typical CPU Uages % than a processor that has a more specialized graphics management component onboard.

How the Synology DS1520+ Intel Celeron J4125 and DS1522+ AMD Emb.Ryzen R1600 Compare:

The traditional data handling of the R1600 is very good, as seen in our DS1522+ testing earlier in 2022. As far as DSM (the Synology software) is concerned it will be able to run EVERYTHING! Additionally, the general file handling and throughput internally are going to be great too, so all good news. Then you have the advantage of the newer gen CPU in the DS1522+ over the DS920+ supporting PCIe3 lanes, affording greater bandwidth to the rest of the hardware (i.e those M.2 slots being higher bandwidth and enabling that network upgrade slot), all the while with the CPU having the potential to hit 3.1Ghz of power when needed. It is genuinely a good CPU and there are lots of reasons why Synology have opted for this CPU, but it is by no means perfect and some specific user setups and their concerns do have merit.

For a start, the AMD R1600 has a higher typical usage (unsurprising for the spec and generally identified as TDP, as a maximum) compared with the avg Intel Celeron being used in other NAS systems released in 2022 (such as the Intel N5105 or J6412) and in a system that will be in operation 24×7, this is going to a question mark for those affected by erratically rising energy prices right now, The difference might only be pence on the day, but those pence add up! Then there is the dual cores. Although having the four threads IS handy and will be useful, Cores will always beat threads when it comes to capabilities.

#4 – DS1522+ Server Side HEVC/H.265 Support and Conversions are a little lacklustre

Finally, there is a lack of integrated graphics. Most users will not notice this as an issue in day-to-day use, but multimedia users and especially a large % of Plex users will notice, if they are a little more reliant on the server-side processing than on the client. For example, if your media collection contains alot of dense/complex audio media (RAW, MP4a, etc) OR alot of higher-end HEVC/H.265 Media BUT you do not have client hardware that supports these types (or allows local client conversions/transcoding), then the NAS will have to use raw horsepower to get the job done – much less efficient than embedded graphics doing the job. Again, you might not be impacted by this (your client hardware might have enough power and privileges, or you own a local HEVC-licensed device), but it IS a concern if you are running a Plex Media Server on the DS1522+ and need the NAS to convert files on the fly. Earlier in 2022, I compared the DS920+ (with a Celeron) vs the DS1522+ (with this same AMD R1600) in a detailed YouTube video testing 4K Media in Plex. Here are the results:

#5 –  The 10GbE Port Upgrade is Unconventional and Proprietary

The network upgrade port of the DS1522+ is PCIe Gen 3 x 2 slot (so a potential 2,000MB/s bandwidth). This is not a commonly used adapter connector and this means that you cannot use off-the-shelf 10GbE ethernet upgrade cards when upgrading the system, but rather you need to use Synology’s own first-party, specifically designed adapter on this system, the E10G22-T1-mini. On the plus side, that is a decent amount of bandwidth being made available to a single 10GbE connection and it will be interesting to see if Synology can flesh out a range of accessories for this adapter slot, despite its small form. Additionally, many users will embrace the convenience of this upgrade module method compared with the slightly more hands-on and internally invasive PCIe upgrade methods that are traditionally associated with network upgrades. However, this module costs a pinch more than normal 3rd party PCIe 10GbE upgrade cards and is also a little bit pricier than their own normal PCIe 10G upgrade card Synology’s own E10G18-T1).

The fact that it arrives in this proprietary form is possibly another move by this brand to keep everything in a ‘first-party ecosystem’ which I know a number of users are less keen on. Nevertheless, having an option of 10GbE here is tremendously useful to have, but I query whether this module was the only way it could have been done. 

What We Said About the Synology DS1522+ NAS in our FULL Review

The Synology DS1522+ is a good NAS drive and most business-focused users are going to appreciate what this newer configuration of hardware is able to provide. There was never any doubt in the extent to which this new NAS would support DSM7, and given its architecture, there is virtually nothing in the popular NAS software that this system cannot do. Likewise, having the option of 10GbE on a Diskstation of this scale will be hugely attractive to some, though the proprietary means with which you need to upgrade is arguably less desirable. The R1600 CPU is a good choice of processor for file handling and simultaneous tasks, as is the 8GB of memory that this system arrives with, plus the potential to ramp it up to 32GB. After that though, the desirability of this system to home users and multimedia users is a little less compelling and with such a large audience of users who look at NAS for their media streaming, the DS1522+ not featuring a more graphically enabled chip will leave them somewhat underwhelmed. Bottom line, the DS1522+ is a solid and full DSM7 supporting system here and you cannot fault the design, internal/external performance and ease of use of this Synology NAS. However, there will always be users wondering why this NAS never arrived with an Intel chip.

Massive Synology DS1522+ Review Article – HERE

YouTube Synology DS1522+ Review – HERE

SOFTWARE - 10/10

HARDWARE - 8/10

PERFORMANCE - 8/10

PRICE - 8/10

VALUE - 8/10

8.4

PROS

👍🏻8GB of ECC Memory that can be scaled to 32GB – LOVELY STUFF
👍🏻Optional 10GbE Upgrade
👍🏻Continued Support of Synology Hybrid RAID on this scale
👍🏻4x LAN Ports by default
👍🏻Expandable with another 10 Drives down the line (2x DS517)
👍🏻NVMe SSD Bays for Caching will be very useful with this 5-Bay RAID Storage
👍🏻DSM 7.1 is hands down the best NAS software and services in the market right now
👍🏻3 years base warranty, with optional extra 2yrs
👍🏻Numerous storage service advantages inc. BTRFS, Fast RAID Rebuild and Auto-Repair
👍🏻First Party Hybrid Cloud services with Synology C2
👍🏻Exceptionally good surveillance software included

CONS

👎🏻That CPU is going to divide opinion
👎🏻HDD & SSD Compatibility list is a little thinner than I expected
👎🏻Optional 10GbE upgrade is via a heavily proprietary route

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