The Alpine AL-212 by Annapurna Labs, which was recently acquired by Amazon, looks to be the real deal, offering high performance with open file transfers while consuming very little power. The major difference between the DS215+ and the DS415+, aside from the number of bays, is that the second uses a quad-core Intel Rangeley CPU (C2538) clocked at 2.4 GHz while the first is equipped with a slower CPU that has less cores, although it does manage similar performance levels. The DS215+ also features a metal casing while the DS415+ uses a plastic one, though it is of very good quality.

Although it can only take two HDDs, which limits it to a RAID 1 configuration that can't exceed 8 TB, the NAS will fully cover a small-to-medium office that needs a NAS to simply store and share documents with. According to Synology, the DS215+ is for business environments; however, I believe many enthusiast users will opt to buy it because of its rich feature set, which, among others, includes a pair of Ethernet ports that can be teamed for increased network transfer speeds if a suitable managed switch is used. The prices of network switches that support the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) has also significantly dropped over the last couple years—you can now buy a managed 16-port Gigabit switch to increase your network's performance for around 160 bucks.

The list of advantages the DS215+ boasts is long and includes the amazing DSM OS, a silent operation, support for up to 25 camera channels with two camera licenses provided for free, ErP Lot 6 2013 compliance, and USB 3.0 support. The most annoying downsides are the lack of a USB 3.0 port at the face, its non-upgradeable RAM, and the lack of AES-NI support, which leads to low performance with encrypted files. Since this is a business-centric NAS, I cannot call the lack of an HDMI port a major setback; however, its absence will surely upset home users who would like a NAS that could take over the role of a media player. The media-streaming option can be used as an alternative; however, many of us prefer to connect our TV to the NAS through an HDMI cable.

The DS215+ managed to get a very high rating thanks to its good overall performance and rich feature set. If the storage space it can muster covers your needs, it is definitely worth considering. Its price looks a little stiff for a 2-bay NAS, but you won't readily find such a combination of high performance and low power consumption, its silent operation the cherry on top. Here is yet another Synology product I simply have to give the recommendation award.