UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/tryprimefree
USA http://www.amazon.com/tryprimefree
EU http://www.amazon.de/primegratistesten
Find the best Synology NAS Cyber Monday Deal. All the latest discounts will be displayed here. If you are still unsure of which NAS exactly you need, use this as a NAS buying guide. You will find entire Synology Desktop NAS range divided into categories of the use case helping you to narrow down your choice. I hope this helps saving money and help to avoid wrong purchase because Prime Day lasts only for a day- so buying a wrong thing would mean missing out on the best deal of what you really need.
Boxing Day | Budget NAS for simple computer and mobile backups
The one, two and four drive J series options will be a perfect solution for NAS beginners. You can replace Dropbox or other cloud backup service providers with something cheaper, faster and more reliable. You can synchronize folders on multiple computers, tablets and even phones including built-in file version control. This is a very useful feature for recovering lost, deleted or overwritten documents even as long as months ago. The J series NAS can be used as full system backup storage for MAC time machine, Windows, LINUX, Mobiles and tablets. You can also use J series NAS as Plex storage (DS218j also as Plex server) for Nvidia Shield TV transcoder or NUC Plex server. A single drive is a good first NAS choice but would be recommended to have an external backup plan in place if it is not used as backup NAS already. The 2 drive option can mirror each drive which will keep your data safe even if one drive gets broken. The 4 drive option is better value for money (price per gigabite) with its RAID5 functionality which allows any 1 drive break down without loosing any data at all.
Boxing Day | Standard NAS for Backups, local multimedia and multi users
Standard non-plus Synology Series do little of everything and is still a good budget option for a simple NAS. You are still limited in a few different ways like max data transfer speed, app compatibility, expandability, and upgradability. It is a still a great choice if your main focus is data storage, backups and file sharing among many users. It also features all of the functionality mentioned before with J series and is made for 5 and more users with much faster processing speed. Some people might feel J series being a little sluggish – then Synology standard series will be a better choice. If you want to run a Plex media server, you will be limited with DS1517 and DS1817 models, because these two are the only one in the range to be compatible with PLEX. The one bay has no RAID protection built in (unless you have external backup plan or cloud backup), the 2-bay will allow one drive failure without losing data or effecting users accessing the data, and multi-bay options with RAID5 and RAID6 protection mechanisms which will allow 1 or 2 drive failures without losing data or interruption user access. Also, NAS with four bays and more will have 2 or more LAN ports allowing doubled data transfer speed or load balancing function without upgrading your switch or other network components.
Boxing Day | Multimedia series NAS
These 2 bay and 4 bay NAS models are very different in their performance and compatibility. DS218play will do a very good job with streaming and transcoding Full HD and even 4K media. But Plex can be only installed on DS418play because Realtek processor is not supported by Plex. Also Plex is very power demanding software which will limit video transcoding to Full HD format only. For 4K transcoding you will have to use Synology own app called DS Video. The Play models will also do other tasks described in paragraphs above.
Boxing Day | Plus series NAS for expand-ability, upgrades, extra performance
With the plus series, things get more interesting. Not only these NAS models can do all the tasks mentioned above they also will do them much faster allowing multiple apps to be running I the background. You can also attach expansion units and add more drives to your existing RAID or create a separate one. With a 6 bay NAS models and above you can often find a PCIe slot for many different cards including 10GbE for speeding up your data transfer time up to 10 times and more.
Boxing Day | Top of the range XS series NAS for superb performance
The XS series NAS is top of the range solution with not only upgrade and expansion possibilities but also with included “no questions asked” replacement service. If anything happens to this NAS- Synology will automatically send you out a replacement unit to get you back online. Many people use these NAS models for very CPU demanding tasks like Plex 4K transcoding or multiple HD stream transcoding. It also is often used among video editors who want to do direct editing from the NAS as well as project sharing capabilities between dozens of people locally and remotely.