Item: Synology Disk Station DS508: the NAS that has it all?
Author: Michael Harries

Final thoughts

On paper, the Synology Disk Station DS508 has a great feature set, and the web-based interface is certainly more usable than many we've seen in the past. With five-disk support allowing up to 5TiB of storage, spread across multiple RAID volumes if you wish, it certainly has the capacity and flexibility to suit most people's NAS needs.

It also introduces a number of features to make integration into the digital home as painless as possible, from iTunes remote device support that simply worked flawlessly, to remote video and audio streaming, and even features such as recording from IP-enabled surveillance cameras. It's certainly a step in the right direction, and goes some way to realising the potential of the digital-home concept.

Unfortunately, in practice we ran into a few issues with compatibility and user-friendliness. Having two hard disks 'crash' simultaneously, making us lose a whole RAID5 array, not because of a hard-disk failure but due to, potentially, a compatibility problem, is unacceptable. In addition, there is little to no documentation provided for when things don't simply work as expected, making troubleshooting a painful process.

With pricing around the £630 mark, the Synology Disk Station DS508 is not cheap by any standards, and is likely out of the price range of many home consumers. What could have been the best NAS on the market only comes into its own once you get past the initial foibles of setting the box up.

HEXUS Awards

The Synology Disk Station DS508 has a great feature set, a simple-to-use interface, and a number of applications that get us really excited about the future of the digital home. Unfortunately, the costs involved, as well as compatibility and usability issues mean that it is potential unfulfilled.

As good as the Synology Disk Station DS508 may be as a NAS box, it leaves us wanting more for less money. Still, it packs in more features than any other NAS box we've seen and thus is duly recoginised with an HEXUS Innovation award.

Synology Disk Station DS508

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Synology Disk Station DS508 is available from SCAN and there's free delivery for regular HEXUS.community members.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Synology's representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.