The main purpose of today's review was to evaluate the surveillance capabilities of such a budget NAS as the Synology DS416j, paired with a couple good cameras and two reliable HDDs. As shown, you don't need an incredibly expensive NAS to build a fully featured surveillance center. Synology's highly sophisticated Surveillance Station app plays an obvious role since its newest beta version offers a native client to ensure you won't have to mess with browsers and their compatibility issues with various add-ons, or their role as resource hogs. Personally, I highly prefer the native client over a browser window, and Synology even offers a portable version of its client. With a total budget of around $670, you are able to build a very versatile and advanced surveillance center with the ability to expand your coverage to up to16 cameras. You should buy a stronger NAS than the DS416j with the capability to support more cameras if covering a huge area is the goal. Setting up Surveillance Station is a piece of cake since you only have to follow the detailed instructions provided by its interface. All options are also provided in a clear and intuitive way, while the help application is always there to provide you with the means to answer any questions. I don't believe it will take more than a few hours to fully configure a sophisticated surveillance system in detail once the cameras have been placed. The support of optional I/O modules also means you can increase surveillance capabilities notably, and you don't only have to rely on the data of these IP cameras, but can attach other sensors to the system.

Since I have had the opportunity to also check on other aspects of the DS416j, I ought to mention them as well. I found the DS416j to offer satisfactory performance for its price, and its build quality is pretty good since nothing but Japanese polymer caps were used internally, which will last for ages. This server's power consumption is also so low that you can keep it running around the clock without having to worry about increased electricity bills. The only downsides are its limited amount of RAM and relatively weak SoC with limited transcoding capabilities; if you need to stream HD files, you will have to spend more on a stronger Synology NAS.

The Amcrest IP2M-841B IP cameras I used in today's review offer stunning video quality since they support up to 1080p resolution. Their native interface might not look great, but you won't have to use it at all since you will control them through Synology's Surveillance Station, which recognized mine instantly. Installing the Amcrest cameras was also pretty straightforward. As for the IronWolf HDDs: Given the power consumption readings my equipment recorded, they also appear to consume very little energy, and their specs make them ideal for NAS servers. I cannot comment on their reliability because of the limited time I had them in use, but Seagate seems very confident about their reliability. If you need more more reliability or plan on storing sensitive data or interesting surveillance footage, you should probably invest in Seagate's IronWolf Pro models since they offer almost double the lifetime when compared to their non-pro counterparts.