It uses a Windows-like desktop interface that comes populated with Control Panel, File Station, Package Center, and DSM Help folders. Synology's DSM operating system makes it easy to install the DS418play, download apps, create folders, and assign rights. Internal drives support Btrfs and EXT4 file systems, and any external drive you connect to the NAS via USB can use the Btrfs, EXT3, EXT 4, FAT, NTFS, HFS+, and exFAT file systems. It supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, JBOD, Basic, and two flavors of Synology's Hybrid RAID (SHR), which lets you mix drives of different capacities. The DS418play uses a hardware transcoding engine that can transcode two channels of 4K video at the same time, making it ideal for serving video to multi-platform clients. The NAS device comes with 2GB of memory in one slot, but you can populate the empty slot with a 4GB module for a total of 6GB of memory.

Under the hood are a 2GHz dual-core CPU and two memory slots. Around back are a secondary USB 3.0 port, two Gigabit LAN ports with link-aggregation and fail-over support, and a reset button. Also up front are LED indicators for system status and status of each of the four drives, as well as a power switch and a USB 3.0 port. They are completely tool-less and will accept 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives. The front contains four removable drive sleds that you can lock in place with the included key. The DS418play ($429.99 at Amazon) uses a black cabinet that measures 6.5 by 7.8 by 8.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.9 pounds without hard drives (you have to supply your own). It delivered fast file-transfer performance in our testing, but it's not quite as speedy as its two-bay sibling, the DiskStation DS718+. It's managed using Synology's excellent DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system and is equipped with two LAN ports, but you'll have to supply your own drives.

Designed as a multimedia hub, the Synology DiskStation DS418play ($429.99) is a versatile four-bay network-attached storage (NAS) device that offers up to 48TB of storage and a huge selection of apps for streaming 4K video and music, backing up data, synchronizing files across multiple platforms, and more.

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