Synology DS213j replacement

I am about to upgrade/change my Synology DS213J NAS and the DS218+ seems the right replacement model. I use it connected via a Netgear FS305 switch to my iMac, router, TV & hifi to send files to two Ipads & a Sonos; for the multimedia video source to my TV; to store/send music to my hi-fi kit and as overflow storage from the iMac. No surveillance or video transcoding needed.

You recently reviewed a QNAP TS251B which has a host of new features, particularly an HDMI connection & a PCIe port for a 10Gbe network card and I wondered whether I would benefit from these.

HDMI port. What does this add? The current set up connects via USB and seems to work fine.

10 Gbe connection. Obviously faster, but what would this actually give me in real terms? Faster file transfer to the computer? Faster file transfer to the iPads?. What other hardware would be required to implement this? Network card? Cat 6 cable? New Switch – Netgear GS308? Dual LAN ports? New router?

Finally, do you think a DS219+ is on the horizon in the near future?

The DS218+ is a very popular choice this year because it does a little bit of everything and it is much faster then j series. You can still use it as a multimedia center including music, video, and photos. Synology does not introduce direct connectivity with USB or HDMI because they thing NAS is NAS and everything needs to be done over the network. If not then people supposed to get Blu-ray players etc.

TS251B is indeed a very interesting release, but because of extra hardware functionality, it is more expensive then DS218+. They both offer exactly the same performance, but 51B can be upgraded to 10Gbe or SSD caching and it also has HDMI.

But do you really need these things extra? The answer is no if you survived without HDMI so far and also without 10GbE. The HDMI ports are handy for people who do not own smart TV with an ethernet port. The NAS can be connected directly and now you have a smart TV. It is also handy if you have a 4K TV and a very slow network in place. Having HDMI will not overload the network.

The 10GbE in a home environment is not useful. You need to buy also a 10GbE switch. cat6a/ cat7 cables and receiving computer need to have 10GbE port available. This connection is popular among video editors who need fast data transfer speeds.

Again if you were happy with existing NAS, get the new one from the same manufacturer. It is in top5 best selling NASes.

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