DS416 or DS418 or maybe DS918+

DS416 or DS418 or maybe DS918+ ?

Question: I’m trying to find out which NAS is the best for me. I know it’s gonna be a 4-bay, so it will be a 416 or a 418.
Should I wait a while for the 416 series go on sale or buy the newest 418.
I have a 4K TV and a 4K Android TV  box which is capable of decoding almost any kind of video and audio.

On the other side, the kids have tablets which don’t support 4K so do I need decoding on the NAS? Hereby I think I can put the ‘j’ version on the side.
Do I really need the ‘play’ version or is the 416/418 enough or maybe the ‘+’?

The most data I can store/ backup on my simple and older Seagate 2-bay.
The Synology I would like to use as a media server for everyone in the house for every device.
For hard disks, I think 4x 4Tb in RAID 5 is enough for me.

 

Answer: DS416 is not supporting 4K video transcoding and it is quite old now. It will soon go on sale because there will be no use for them apart from file storage. Only options you can consider is DS418, DS418play or DS918+. DS418play will transcode most of the 4K media same as D918+. If there will be 2 people watching transcoded streams at the same time DS418play is what you need. If more people than choose DS918+ – it is more powerful. If transcoding is very important, just streaming – go for ds418. DS418 transcodes some of 4K media and still can do other tasks.

 

DS418, DS418play and DS918+ prices:

 

 

Transcoding specs under:

 

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