The ugly and outdated front panel of the DS420j left a bad first impression, and re-installing the one-piece top and side cover also reminded of NAS servers from eras past. To make matters worse, drive installation takes the removal of four screws, and if you are not careful, you will displace the top and side cover, which means you will probably spend more time trying to re-install it rather than the drives. Thankfully, you won't have to install or replace drives often, and if you hide the NAS somewhere, you won't have to look at its outdated plastic front without a front USB port.

Given all the above, someone could easily assume my verdict is negative. However, I am not done yet. This is an affordable NAS for Synology standards, so there are areas where compromises had to be made. For me, the most important cons are the lack of a RAM upgrade option and no docker support. If you can live without those features, you get a capable NAS running the terrific DSM OS for a little over $300, and while Synology states that this NAS has very limited transcoding capabilities, I still haven't faced significant issues with the Plex application, even when transcoding multimedia files to high bitrate 1080p formats. However, do not expect to run Plex in tandem with other heavy applications. The RTD1296 might have four cores and be ideal for a home-centric NAS, but it will set the limits in highly stressful scenarios (e.g., heavy file transfers with more than four clients). For home use, the RTD1296 is ideal because it is very efficient: power consumption is very low, so you can easily have it operate around the clock.

Overall performance is not groundbreaking, but performance per buck is pretty high because of an affordable price tag. You can find more affordable NAS servers, but those won't run the fantastic DSM OS, which is among the best in this field. The lack of a proxy server in Download Station might trouble users who want to hide their IP for their own reasons. The solution is relatively easy as you can either set a VPN connection or a proxy server for the NAS in the network settings. The lack of an HDMI port is again a thing Synology missed. A home-centric NAS should include an HDMI port, especially as it wouldn't increase cost notably. I don't understand Synology's persistence in excluding this port with most of their products and will keep on complaining about it until they hear me.