Conclusions and Final Thoughts.

Undoubtably the Synology DS411j is a great piece of equipment for the home or small office environment.  The sheer speed of the thing is argument enough, but when you tie in features like the surveillance station and download station it becomes even more impressive.  Not even mentioning the DSM interface which, in my opinion, far surpasses any other form of web based management that I’ve used before.

This drive is truly one that you can make your own, even with the included features it’s impressive, but when you add to that the large library of additional applications shown on the Synology website you’re looking at a device that can almost run your office network rather than sit on it.

One point that I would raise is that most home users will only have a 100Mbps network, not 1Gbps as used here, so performance in the home could seem rather lackluster.  That being said, for media streaming, file storage, etc. 100Mbps is perfectly fine, though if you’re spending this kind of money on this kind of device it may be worth shelling out an additional £60 on a Gigabit switch for your home network.

Speaking of price, the RRP of the DS411j is around £270, though it can be found on several retailers websites for slightly under that.  At this price in comes in slightly cheaper than some competitors with similar offerings, so is an ideal choice if you’re looking for this kind of device.

If £270 is too rich for you, Synology also offer a two-bay device which is available online for around £160.

Bare in mind that these prices are without any hard disks, so depending on your requirements the total cost could rise quite significantly.  If you’re a home user I’d recommend buying the two-bay version and installing a pair of 2TB disks, although there’s absolutely nothing to stop you running the four-bay model with two disks installed, so this may be a better choice if you’re unsure of your future requirements.

All in all, I was impressed by this device.  The list of features and applications, coupled with the original DSM web interface make it a product that I would happily part with my own cash with.  It’s not perfect, but then neither are any of the competitors, and quite frankly you could do a lot worse than the DS411j.

Final Scores:

Ease Of Use: 8 / 10
Specifications: 7 / 10
Features: 10 / 10
Price: 7 / 10
Overall: 8 / 10