Synology DS416play Four-Bay Consumer NAS Review

Introduction

Nearly two years ago, we got our hands-on the DS415play, an Intel Evansport platform that was built from the ground up as a media serving and data storage solution. The DS416play is the follow-up to that device and it based on new silicon from the Intel Braswell refresh, launched in January.

With the play moniker sitting firmly behind this new solution, we can reasonably expect the DS416play will be a solid media transcoding and serving device, along with its standard duties as a file server. The move to the DS416play and its extra horsepower allows for this solution to play and transcode single stream 4K video or up to three Full HD videos simultaneously. With this unit, a 400 series platform, it does carry four 3.5" bays with tool-less installation and is backed by the latest DSM OS, version 6.0.1.

Going over the hardware specifications of the DS416play, we have a Braswell platform as mentioned above, this time, the Intel Celeron N3060. This processor is a 64-bit capable chip operating at 1.6GHz with a burst frequency of 2.48GHz paired with 1GB of DDR3 memory.

Four bays complement this solution with both 2.5" and 3.5" support in the HDD and SSD type. Single volume support goes all the way up to 108TB while external storage is supported on all three USB 3.0 ports. With this being a DSM 6.0+ platform, we have support for BTRFS and EXT4 internally with NTFS, FAT, and HFS+ added for external solutions. Dual Gigabit LAN rounds out the rear I/O with WOL support and cooling this entire unit is dual 92mm fans.

The MSRP of the Synology DS416play comes in at $459.99 with a two-year warranty.