Synology is synonymous with NAS, or network-attached storage, and there’s good reason for that. The DiskStation line of products is reliable and robust with a great community that supports consumer and professional use cases. More recently, Synology has reached beyond traditional NAS solutions with BeeStation, a private and family cloud storage solution. I’ve recently been testing the BeeStation Plus, a somewhat less capable, but much more approachable, product, and the DiskStation DS925+, a traditional NAS with a familiar product name to us at 9to5. Both are great in their own way. Here’s how they perform and compare.
BeeStation Plus makes private cloud storage easy
Let’s start with the BeeStation Plus. In short, this is the NAS solution you can recommend to friends and family who don’t care what NAS stands for. It’s far less configurable than a DiskStation. That’s a plus for a mainstream consumer product. It requires minimal setup and research to use. The process consists of unboxing the unit, attaching the power supply and included Ethernet cable, and scanning a QR code to initiate setup and update firmware. After that, BeeStation apps on iPhone, iPad, and Mac make it user-friendly.
BeeStation Plus is a closed box with 8TB of total storage. Of the 8TB included, 6.98TB is usable, with about 9% likely lost to drive math and another 4% to system overhead. What can you do with all that space? BeeStation is designed to hold files and media. Actually getting your media to the BeeStation is surprisingly easy. For example, I was able to transfer my 1.5TB photo and video library from my iPad Pro to the BeeStation without much effort using the BeeStation Photos app. It has a few tricks that make it work well, like using a dim standby screen to keep the process active while using minimal resources. After backing up a complete library, you can optionally clear space from your device each time.
Setup and file management is simple by design
You can also use BeeStation Plus to act as a super-simple cloud solution for all files to offload space from your devices. Integration with Finder on the Mac and the Files app on iPhone and iPad makes it possible to use BeeStation Plus with the built-in file management apps too. BeeStation also talks to other cloud providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive to create a unified cloud storage solution. The unit also features one USB-C port and one USB-A port that let you connect external storage or computers for transferring files to the BeeStation Plus storage. You can also do one-time transfers from Google Photos, or have ongoing sync with iCloud Photos for automatic backup.
Backups and specs
A few other things to mention. Synology is all about backup, and BeeStation Plus supports multiple backup methods. First, you can back up BeeStation Plus to Synology’s cloud protection service called BeeProtect. Like Time Machine on the Mac, BeeStation is clever in how it handles versions of backups: one from each day of the last week, and one from the previous week, allowing eight versions in case you need to revert or restore something from a few changes ago.
After a free trial, BeeStation Plus has a reasonable fee of $11.99/month or $119/year. There’s also a standard BeeStation product with 4TB storage instead of 8TB, but everything is faster in addition to having more storage with the Plus model. BeeProtect is priced 50% less on the BeeStation model with half the storage. Alternatively, you can back up BeeStation Plus to a DiskStation, which is great if you want BeeStation for some of the ease-of-use benefits but have a DiskStation for more advanced work.
The other thing about BeeStation Plus that potential users should probably know, especially compared to the standard BeeStation with half the storage, is its GPU (graphics processing unit) and NPU (neural processing unit). Both support AI features like facial and object recognition for photo search, but the Intel Celeron J4125 and 4GB RAM inside the Plus model will provide faster performance than the Realtek RTD1619B and 1GB RAM inside the standard BeeStation. Critically, the additional resources are also what make the Plus model ideal for families (supporting simultaneous access without slowing down) versus the standard model for personal use. Of course, if you have larger storage needs, Plus is the way to go, especially since the drives are not user-accessible.
... continue reading