Specifications

The server uses a dual-core SoC with model number Alpine AL-212, clocked at 1.4 GHz. Annapurna Labs, a newly founded Israeli company that was recently acquired by Amazon, builds this SoC, and the information on it is limited. According to what little information Synology shared, it includes a hardware encryption engine; however, it doesn't support the AES-NI instruction set, so we expect a significant performance drop with encrypted file transfers, though Synology states such not to be the case. The AL-212 doesn't include a hardware transcoding engine, but take into account that this is a business-centric NAS, which makes the lack of one a minor drawback. The SoC is supported by 1 GB of RAM, which, while not upgradeable, will be enough for most usage scenarios since the Linux operating system Synology developed for their products is trimmed around consuming very little resources.

Total storage space can reach 16 TB with two 8 TB HDDs, before both are formatted into JBOD or RAID 0. RAID 1 will cut storage space in half, but will increase data safety. As per usual for a NAS server of this category, iSCSI is supported. Finally, the I/O ports include two USB 3.0 and an eSATA port, and there are two Ethernet ports that can be teamed for more reliability or higher network transfer speeds.

The NAS is pretty compact and doesn't weigh a lot. A small diameter fan (92 mm) ensures system temperatures stay low, and the power brick that feeds the NAS is strong enough for the task if we take the power consumption figures Synology provides into account. The product's warranty is only two years long, and its price is on the high side.