Synology DS214play: Intel Evansport Almost Done Right

Miscellaneous Aspects & Concluding Remarks

The DS214play is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration for optimal balance of redundancy and capacity. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-1. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities

Coming to the business end of the review, the performance of the DS214play is more than acceptable given the target market (home consumers / power users) and the single GbE link. DSM 5.0's multimedia capabilities are excellent on paper and in practice too, for the most part. Make no mistake, Synology has boldly ventured into a space (hardware accelerated video transcoding for media serving) which no other serious NAS vendor has done before.

In our opinion, from a NAS perspective, the DS214play's unique feature makes more sense than trying to run XBMC on a unit for hooking up to the TV. A NAS needs to be a NAS first and, in most situations, doesn't need to be tied down to a single display. Synology wins hands down on how to properly architect a solution based on an Evansport SoC.

Unfortunately, with bleeding edge features, we also have plenty of bugs resulting in an inconsistent experience. From our interaction with Synology, it looks like they are showing a commitment to devote resources to perfect the firmware for this SoC platform (and also probably release new units based on it such as the 4-bay DS414play exhibited at the 2014 CeBit). So, it looks like most of our concerns should be addressed in future firmware upgrades and updates to the mobile apps.

While the same SoC can stand in good stead for the next generation unit and/or the DS414play, we also need continued commitment from Intel to release SoCs for this product line. Ideally, Intel could offer QuickSync (for which plenty of software work has already been done in the PC space) instead of a custom transcoding block in the SoC. Marrying QuickSync into this lineup would also enable Synology to port the hardware accelerated transcoding capabilities to high-end NAS units based on the Core i-series processors.

On the pure storage side of things, it is not clear why Synology doesn't take advantage of the security engine to provide better performance for encrypted folders. Additional DRAM capacity might prove helpful if the NAS has multiple simultaneous external connections (each triggers a openvpn process) and multiple simultaneous transcoding sessions. In our limited testing, we didn't run into capacity crunch, but it is not inconceivable given that at least one other Evansport NAS vendor has models equipped with 2 GB of memory.

If one is planning on buying the unit solely for its transcoding and media serving capabilities, restrictions such as the non-availability of DTS audio (probably permanent) must be fully understood. If it is mostly user-generated media (such as camcorder streams or PVR recordings) and not Blu-ray remuxes, the DS214play presents an excellent (and currently, the only) choice at its price point / power consumption profile. For those worried about two bays not being enough for media storage, the DS214play also supports the DX513 expansion module (that attaches to the eSATA port) giving a total of seven disks across at least two volumes (the disks in the DX513 can't be used to expand the existing volume using the two primary drives).

The DS214play is priced at $370 for a diskless configuration. Synology's premium pricing is a well-known fact, but the unique multimedia features of the DS214play make it difficult to actually find a competing unit to compare the price against. All said, the strengths of DSM 5.0 and the well-developed mobile ecosystem combine to create an enjoyable and unique experience for DS214play users once the transcoding limitations are understood.