Synology Reveals Its New Storage Product Lineup
Synology's new range of products includes a variety of NAS units and a sleek USB station.
NAS manufacturer Synology clearly aimed to impress at this year's CeBIT by showcasing a plethora of new products, including a range of NAS units powered by Intel's Atom CE5300 SoC and a new USB station. First, we have the DS1513+ and DS1813+, which are NAS devices that provide space for five and eight drives, respectively, and are powered by the Intel Atom D2700. Both units feature "silent and screwless trays" and four gigabit ethernet ports.
In a similar vein to the previously reported "Intelligent NAS Units" from Thecus, Synology has introduced the DS714, a NAS unit powered by the Intel Atom CE5315 SoC clocked at 1.2 GHz. The unit features a single gigabit ethernet port and HDMI output that allows the NAS to act as a media server and directly output content. The DS714 is expected to be released in June 2013 and may be working on a budget version of the DS714 with a more basic chassis.
To suit the lower end of the NAS market, Synology has announced the DS213j, which includes 512 MB of RAM, a 1.2 GHz Marvell ARM controller,- and a quiet rubber-mounted fan.
Finally, we have Synology's USB Station 3, which features two USB 3.0 ports, a Micro SD card reader, and a SD card slot that holds the unit's firmware. The last item is completely user replaceable, and the card's unused space can be used for storage and shared through the device.



How do you figure this is an ad? I was looking at the 812+ and I am glad I waited..... now I will go with a much nicer 813+ and I saw it here first.... but I do wish it was more of a review going into more details as to the upgrades from the 812+ which, yes this article is really lacking.
Can't really call it a "review" more than a product announcement.
I know they need to make a profit. They can also source the parts for less than me. The biggest joke is the RAM installed. RAM is extremely cheap and the big factor in read/write performance on these NAS. I'd rather spend an extra $30 and have 8GB RAM. That way it would be able to quickly handle read/write on a RAID-z setup.
Every self-made Linux NAS fan constantly discounts the price of their own time and labor when they say "I can build [this] for less". You will spend hours upon hours shopping for the parts, hours building it and then testing the hardware for stability, hours installing the OS and then configuring the installation to your hardware and then yet more time configuring the NAS OS to your current network configuration.
While devices like ReadyNAS are PnP for a good majority of users. The HDD's are (usually) given as reliable once formatted by the NAS and the hardware and OS are preconfigured for ease of network integration. As multiple added bonuses you get a unified warranty, tech support and many times added features like iOS or Android integration apps, included cloud services, etc. etc. etc.
I wish you Linux fans would sometimes see the forest from the trees when you make posts like this.