The newest addition to Synology's Plus series of DiskStation network storage devices, the DS1019+ ($649.99) is a five-bay NAS designed for 4K video streaming, file sharing, and small-office data backups. It uses Synology's excellent DSM operating system, which makes it easy to configure and manage NAS functionality and offers a huge number of apps that let you configure the device as a multimedia, mail, cloud, and chat server. You'll have to buy and install your own drives with this model, but its fast performance, versatility, and rich feature set earn it our Editors' Choice for multi-bay NAS devices.
Tons of Storage
At 6.5 by 9.0 by 8.7 inches (HWD), the DS1019+ is a bit smaller than the DS1517+ (6.5 by 9.8 by 9.5 inches) that we reviewed back in 2017. The black enclosure has five front-loading drive bays that will accommodate 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA drives. You can hot-swap the drives, and the trays are tool-less and can be locked in place to prevent accidental or unauthorized removal.
The right side of the front panel has a system status LED and five drive activity LEDS. Below that is a USB 3.0 port and a power button. Around back are an additional USB 3.0 port, two Gigabit LAN ports that can be configured for link aggregation or failover support, a reset button, a power port, and an eSATA port. On the underside of the enclosure are two removable panels that give you access to two M.2 NVMe SSD slots. These allow you to build NVMe SSD cache without taking up room in any of the five main bays.
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The DS1019+'s five internal drive bays can be populated with drives that give you a total capacity of up to 70TB (14TB in each of the five slots), and when used with a DX517 expansion unit, it will support a total of 140TB of storage. Supported RAID types include Basic, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, JBOD, and Synology's Hybrid RAID. Under the hood are a 1.5GHz quad-core Intel Celeron processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and hardware that can transcode 4K video and stream it on the fly to connected clients. The transcoding engine supports more than 20 video formats. The DS1019+ uses a pair of three-speed 92mm fans to keep drives and internal components cool.
The DS1019+ uses the same DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system as other Synology NAS devices, including the DS1517+, the DS119j, and the DS416slim. The OS sports a Windows-like desktop that contains Control Panel, File Station, Package Center, and Help icons, as well as a System Health window that shows you CPU and RAM usage.
The Package Center is where you go to download apps, which will then be added to the desktop. There are currently more than 130 Synology-branded and third-party apps available, including iTunes Server, Plex Server, Video Station, Logitech Media Server, and TVMosaic apps that let you use the DS1019+ as a media server. There are also numerous cloud, email, and backup server apps, a surveillance station app that lets you use the DS1019+ as a IP camera management console, and chat server and web development apps.
Tap the Control Panel icon to assign user rights and create shared folders, configure network settings, block IP addresses, adjust fan speed settings, enable email and push message alerts, and configure desktop themes. In File Station, you can read, search, and move files, modify file structures, edit file attributes and privileges, and share file links. Use the Help icon to view tutorials and search for specific help topics. Tap the Main Menu button in the upper left corner to access the Storage Manager utility, where you can create and delete volumes, monitor drive health, create a storage pool, and configure SSD Cache and set up hot spare drives.
Speedy Performance
Installing the DS1019+ was relatively easy. I installed five Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives and connected the NAS to my router using the included LAN cable. I typed http://find.synology.com into my browser's URL bar and waited five seconds for the drive to be recognized. I pressed the Connect button and then the Set Up button, and installed the latest version of DSM, which also formats the drives. After a 10-minute wait, I was prompted to create an administrator account and password and then create a QuickConnect account and password, which lets you access the NAS remotely without using port-forwarding.
Next, I created a storage volume and configured the drives to use SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) with the Btrfs file system. The DS1019+ needed more than 12 hours to verify the hard drives, configure the file system, and run a parity consistency check. You can use the NAS while it's going through the initialization and parity check process, but performance may be affected. Once completed, this configuration yielded a total RAID-protected capacity of about 35TB using the five 10TB drives.
The DiskStation DS1019+ was not only extremely quiet, but delivered outstanding results on our file-transfer performance tests, in which we transfer a 4.9GB folder containing a mix of video, photo, music, and office document files between the NAS and a host PC. Its best-in-class write speed of 98MBps was 18MBps faster than the five-bay Synology DiskStation DS1517+ and 56MBps faster than the 4-bay Asustor AS1004T. Similarly, the DS1019+ took top honors with a blazing read speed of 94MBps. The DS1517+ garnered 84MBps, and the AS1004T managed 42MBps.
Fast and Feature-Packed
The Synology DiskStation DS1019+ is an excellent choice for video enthusiasts and small-office users looking for a versatile five-bay NAS that can handle their data backup, video streaming, IP camera management, and file-sharing needs. As with other Synology NAS devices, it is easy to install and is managed with a user-friendly OS. It also delivers very fast file-transfer performance and is whisper quiet. As such, it earns our Editors' Choice for multi-bay NAS drives. If a five-bay NAS is overkill, check out our Editors' Choice dual-bay NAS, the QNAP TS-251B-4G. It too streams 4K video and offers relatively fast performance and lots of companion apps, and it's almost half the price of the DS1019+.
The Synology DiskStation DS1019+ is a five-bay NAS device that offers speedy performance and valuable features, including support for numerous RAID configurations, 4K video transcoding, and a host of apps.
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