The fresh Synology DS916+ performs incredibly well regardless of what you throw at it, making it a unit of the high-end. Though it is mostly destined for small business environments, I believe it will be among the top choices for enthusiasts able to afford it. Regarding business usage, the lack of lockable trays can be a problem since physical data protection is very important in such environments. Plastic trays also don't look nice in expensive NAS servers, and I strongly believe Synology should use metallic ones with anti-vibration materials with its high-end products. The means to install HDDs without any tools is a boon, though, since it makes installing or replacing drives fast and easy.

The Intel N3710 CPU and 8 GB of memory wouldn't set new performance standards in a Windows PC, but such hardware in a NAS with a custom-tailored Linux distribution has it perform incredibly well in even difficult situation. The DS916+ performed very well in all our tests. Even encrypted file transfers didn't decrease performance significantly since the CPU features a hardware encryption engine. Multimedia performance was also very good, especially with Synology's Video Station application which exploits the CPU's transcoding engine. Another major advantage is the support for the Btrfs filesystem in addition to ext4. Btrfs brings many improvements to the table, including enhanced data security and several backup options, which is why Synology recommends it over ext4.

For those of you planning on building a fully featured surveillance station, a Synology NAS can be an ideal choice because of Surveillance Station, a richly featured app all Synology products support. The combination of strong hardware and two free camera licenses is a good starting point. This NAS supports up to 40 camera licenses, and if you need more space for your recordings, you are able to easily expand the server's storage capacity by adding Synology's DX513 expansion unit. There is more since the DS913+ also include two Ethernet ports that support NIC teaming (Link Aggregation) for increased transfer speeds, is silent and hardly consumes any power. The most notable downside is the lack of an HDMI port. The competition usually offers more than one HDMI port and audio ports. I think that it is nigh time for Synology to re-evaluate their stance on the HDMI matter to start providing them. An HDMI port is not only the gateway to a slew of different multimedia-specific capabilities, but can be also used for local administration purposes, which can prove useful.

To wrap today's review up, I found the DS916+ to be an incredibly powerful and well-performing NAS with a very long list of advantages. It manages to combine high performance with very low power consumption, which is definitely huge for a NAS server that will most likely operate around the clock. While such low power consumption will result in less money spent on electricity bills, it also results in lower thermal loads, which makes NAS servers very quiet since slow fans are possible. However, keep in mind that HDD operating temperatures also play a major role in a NAS server's operating temperatures, so pick them wisely. The faster and larger the HDD, the higher its operating temperatures.