Synology BeeStation vs DS124/DS223j NAS - Which Is Better?

[Music] hello and welcome back and that right today I want to help you decide between the sonology B station and sonology disc station it's something we've talked about the channel recently and now that the sonology B station is on the verge of release or maybe you're watching this and the device has launched there's going to be a number of you making that Tippy Toe step away from public cloud away from the likes of WD My Cloud or other NZ venders out there and are thinking about opting for the Soni B station as your new private Cloud device and in this video I'm going to go through the differences between them in terms of design in terms of Hardware in terms of price in terms of software and at the end help you decide which one's best for you but straight away between these two devices we have to at least acknowledge they are different Target markets these are two devices that repeatedly in this video you are going to he here examples of why one of them is designed for stressfree easy to ous private NZ Cloud use where you get to have your very own Google Drive your very own Dropbox running in your home or office that could be set up within 2 minutes that has zero stress zero technology required and even includes the storage media you plug it in it's good to go this is designed for people that know how much their time is worth and apparently their time is worth $199 more on that later these on the other hand are sonology dis station devices they vary in caseby casee basis uh and we are specifically looking at devices like the ds24 the DS 223 the DS 223 J and the DS 423 to a lesser degree all of these devices have got the same Hardware caliber that this does just scaling up throughout those families how however they also arrive with a significantly higher price tag in Cas in uh in terms of percentages and they do not arrive with the storage media pre-installed you got to buy your storage media you got to choose you got to research you got to install it you got to set it up setting up a traditional sonology Naz system can take anywhere from 15 minutes all the way through to hours depending on the complexity of your storage the complexity of the raid the complexity of your shared folders and accounts app installing applications and more this is designed with a higher ihy gos learning curve in mind these are devices that are designed for users that either already have some tech knowledge or are prepared to learn some tech knowledge or in larger cases have you've got a system admin in house or a friendly relative who knows his way around a screwdriver and the internet my point is this is for people who don't mind getting their hands a little bit Tech dirty and if that sounds like you you might want to leave this video now but for now let's move on to price how much you intend on spending on either a sonology b station or a sonology disc station although it shouldn't be the defining reason you buy either one of these two devices I think it is going to play its part and understandably because the sonology disc station series has been around as long as it has pricing is a great deal more flexible not only because some devices have been in the market longer but also because there's different variation of that Hardware configuration that we've already talked about for example all of these systems here arrive with a very similar level of Base CPU and memory Hardware the most direct comparison is this the DS1 124 arriving with the same CPU the same memory and $179 price tag remember that doesn't include your tax now on top of that you've got larger options this is the J series this has got 1 gig of memory in that same CPU but it's a 2bay model that means two drives and it cost just a fraction more same goes with the DS 223 this is a unit that's largely identical to the 2bay I just showed you but it has 2 gig of memory hell there's even a 4B version out there as well but if we really zoom in and focus on just those two devices here $179 and $189 that's kind of the base level price tag we're going for there but bear in mind that does not include the hard drive the B station has a hard drive inside we have to factor that in the WD Iron Wolf Drive is 94 uh $94.99 um or you can go for wd's entry as well and the WD hard drive will set you back $112 again that's on offer and that doesn't include your local tax but what's interesting as you can see there is s's own hard drive now in the US pricing is a little bit mixed depending on which retail you go for but in the UK retails for 97 quid including the tax that means that if we were trying to do a straight comparison call it $99 uh for that uh sonology 4tb hard drive that would mean that you would be spending $179 plus that extra uh $99 or if you went for the 2B a little bit more now put that into comparison the be station at the time of recording this video cuz the system doesn't launch until the start of March but at least now recording this at the start of February the device is actually available in many retailers for pre-order which is probably a good thing when it comes to pre-orders personally but when you use techology own site there to look at regions there are some places out there where you can get a hold of this one of the earliest examples is some of the Taiwanese websites we found here for 7,499 Taiwanese dollars which equates to um approximately 2 and 30 to 240 again when you go into Dollars it's largely the same and that includes local tax as well so again that original price tag listed on many many websites lots of reviews including our own of um $199 for the base system without tax is fairly accurate what that comes down to is if you are looking for the lowest price device it's definitely the be station the be station is the lower price device it's got the same Hardware as the $179 device there on the left of the screen but it's rocking out with that 4B inside same CPU same memory but just bear in mind that you can't change that drive at least with these devices you have that flexibility of the drive that you're going to be putting inside and I think that's important because we now need to talk about that Hardware we've already began touching on the hardware of these two devices but I think drilling down even more into it you can see what the sonology have made very conscious choices here to differentiate the dis station that's been around for 20 to 25 years and the new B station first and foremost we've already touched on the inclusive hard drive the fact that this arrives with that hard drive inside there so there's no mucking around there's no need to go ahead and start taking the device apart and slamming in different hard drives into those trays there it's so straightforward arriving uh with front mounted LED there ventilation on the top and the Bas no means to withdraw the drive and on the rear we've got a gigabit network connection there and two USB 3.2 gen one port in type A and type c both of which giving you up to 5 gbits per second you can attach USBS to that for additional storage uh oh sorry extend uh external storage or you can use a USB back up either on a file folder level or back up the whole system onto that USB there's even Cloud synchronization too now none of these are new Concepts all of the things I just described are possible with the one and two Bay versions of the sonology disc station series some of them arriving with three USB ports one on the front two on the back but in most cases two again USB 3.2 gem one but all type A with no type c there also with the exception of the 4B model this all of them have a single gigabit network connection there as well so there's no real gain in terms of the actual connections um on the sonology disc station one and two base compared with that of that little B station device there it's pretty much all par indeed at least the B station does it while being smaller includes the hard drive and a rise with USB typc a little bit more modern there but there is a reason why this is bigger there is a reason why even the 2bay or the 4 Bay are going to be desirable and that's to do with raid we've already touched on it and we will touch on it more in the software section but having multiple drives inside a Naas system allows it to have simultaneous read and write actions at any given time that increases the performance internally and therefore increases the performance but it also increases the storage potential and it also allows you to have redundancy that means that if one drive dies if you have two drives in there and you've got them in a raid one where they're mirroring one another seriously the seagulls are losing their mind today if one of the drives dies then you still have your data the data is still on the disc now that is not a backup that is redundancy it is safety net it would still be incredibly important that you have a USB backup or a cloud backup or a Nas to NAS backup in in place not just relying on raid as that is again a safety net but that is an advantage that is just not present currently on the be Station arriving with only a single Drive means if that drive fails your data is gone again Cloud USB backup there isn't nasda Nas backup currently which is annoying or nasda r r syn or rtrr server if you want to get technical but yeah that one drive in there is problematic also when it comes to the hardware configuration we have to at least acknowledge that not withstanding that some of these systems like the D s223 have got more memory although they got the same CPU which is fine these systems allow us flexibility in the drives that we buy this allows you to buy this device at1 199 with 4 TB of ter storage that's your lot you can't increase it you can't replace it you can't use a nonology G drive you are locked in day one to day the end for TB of storage this on the other hand yes it doesn't arrive with drives but that means you can get a 2bay stick one drive in it add another Drive later you don't have to get 4 TB you can get 1 TB 2 TB 10 TB 20 TB the point I'm making is the flexibility and even the ability to add and replace those drives with larger drives later at least in the case of the tubay is simply not possible on B station it is a system with a relatively low glass ceiling in terms of scalability but of course in terms of software as well we'll touching that in the moment what you can do with a system that's got multiple drives inside is actually a lot more than a single drive because a lot of these drives don't play nice with multiple operations but let's actually talk about that software and the difference between B station and dis station or in this case BSM and DSM [Music] discussing the software and services of the B station and dis station system is going to be a little bit more complex than just one has more features than the other it actually goes in a great deal more than that and I've done a whole video directly comparing both of these software Platforms in quite phenomenal detail going through all the individual differences what they got in common what they don't what they can do and ultimately helping you decide which one's better for your needs so Linked In the description hopefully live by now is that full comparison of be station and DSM and the apps Services file management multimedia mobile apps it's all included in that video for you to check out but when it comes to comparing them both I think the big key differences between them come down to two factors feature set and the extent to which you can use them and understandably and you probably know where this is going scan by now on the sonology side you can simply do more there is a higher learning curve you will need to be able to you know learn a little bit more spend a bit more time understanding networking and storage not too much but you definitely need to start climbing a learning curve that is just not present on the B station to put it into perspective the sheer range of services available and even the more modest DS1 124 on the left hand side of the screen is absolutely Ely huge there is more app support and more diversity of use um they've now integrated container utilization on a number of their real Tech powered systems um but when it comes to the be station be station does a small number of things very very well it does um photo backups for IOS and Android it does uh file management file access Cloud synchronization file folder object level storage that kind of thing all of which can be managed and streamed uh synchronized with your local client PC or Mac system or with your mobile devices all of that in a simplified streamlined interface something you're probably going to love if what you're looking for is simplified storage however that does come with certain downsides and what some of those main downsides can come down to customization wanting to you know open certain kinds of file run certain processes take advantage of sonology key applications such as sonology surveillance Station sonology Drive the entirety of the collaboration Suite with uh email server handling uh communication with chat sonology office things that may well be integrated into sonology B station later on but right now at launch are not integrated into that and it will lead to a more limited experience the same goes for backups the sonology disc station devices that we've discussed have a better and higher degree of uh customization uh to their backup management and synchronization supporting many many more Cloud platforms than b station B station supports four there um Microsoft One Drive Google Drive and Dropbox and of course sonology Zone C2 whereas on dis station it supports something like 12 to 15 and on top of that integrating a lot of those apps and services a great deal better as well there's even more client tools as well when you go to download areas where you can download significantly more tools for your Mac or Windows iOS or Android system and some of the desktop utilities are genuinely groundbreaking and just phenomenal first-party tools whereas on bation you only have one desktop tool at the moment and two mobile Tools in b files and B and B photos on theology you have loads and it's just that degree of flexibility and customiz Iz ation yes it arrives with a learning curve but you just have a better degree of software experience at your disposal now the last thing I want to touch on with regards to software is capability and scalability in the case of the dis station devices you can support so many more um users at any given time now bear in mind we are talking about DSM the software it will differ from system to system more on that in a moment but even when you go to the uh specific for say the DS 223 J the DS 223 or that DS1 124 you can see that supports up to 200 SMB concurrent users SMB being local Windows network devices and of course if uh ifp and FTP the likes of Linux service and of course window uh uh Mac integration as well into your finder um file manager there but on top of that it supports up to 1,24 local users and again those local users have got their own access credentials they can create their own share protocols and different applications do have different levels of concurrent simultaneous usage but they're still pretty darn good now once you compare that versus the be station the B station supports up to eight simultaneous users eight that's eight active accounts now bear in mind that eight isn't the total number of simultaneous processes across the whole device you can have multiple different synchronizations multiple different file services at any given time now the extent to which you can reach sonology don't detail on their General specifications I'm willing to bet it will be hundreds there will be the potential to run hundreds of different processes within the boundaries of those eight simultaneous users that can work with the system however in experimentation and testing and one of the earliest criticisms that I had in my review on an overall generally quite nice product is I just kept getting this warning B station is actively is actively organizing your data it make take more time to load pages and perform operations the reason that's a pain in the bum is it happened a lot now in its defense we are talking about a system with a 4tb mechanical hard drive therefore hard drives unlike ssds which are designed for multi um uh actions input output iops ultimately allowing simultaneous operations to be handled together whereas on a hard drive things are far more sequential and can become overloaded and oversaturated quickly this all adds up to a system running on a storage media that is prone to being overworked very very easily and even if this system can support you know hundreds of simultaneous actions on it within those eight users single 4tb hard drive is going to be a terrible format to run multiple operations at once whereas in the case of the dis station devices you have flexibility you can go for Enterprise grade hard drives you can go for SATA ssds and you have the option for larger scale devices this is something that may change later when technology build upon the be station series and perhaps integrate two and four bay devices into that family but this all adds up to not only a far more detailed and feature Rich software experience on the dis station side and on B station but also a greater degree of control and um scalability in uh how many simultaneous operations you can run at once and the control you have over improving all of them at once cuz don't forget these are both um product families running on the same CPU with the same amount of memory in most cases we're just a few examples of 2 uh gig of memory on the this station and when we utilized the DS 223 when we utilized the DS 223j and when we utilized the ds24 we did not see the Slowdown that we saw uh periodically appearing as we saw on the be station again this may be improved with optimization this may be improved later on with a more features experience and better storage media options built into it but right now at least as far as the software goes as long as you're happy to put in the extra time and learn you will definitely get more out of disc station than be station in the majority of [Music] cases it probably won't come as a tremendous surprise to know that in the end choosing between these two is a case of Simplicity versus capability the sonology B station system I cannot stress enough how straightforward it is and if what you are looking for is a fully looking for a featured private cloud system that is actually feeling modern that actually seemingly makes you feel like you have got your own Google Drive your own Dropbox II photo recognition USB synchronization remote access to it anywhere in the world no additional hidden costs just one payment and you are in and you've got everything the be station is a phenomenal proposition to those users add to that the Simplicity and the zero need for any kind of complexity even setting the device up was CH a four-year-old could set this up and I mean that ultimately this comes down to being a solution for a very specific kind of user that has better things to do with their time but when it comes to the disc station series there's no denying the scalability of storage the choice of that storage the scalability of the hardware in many cases also the capabilities of the software sonology have been refining DSM for literally decades and what these systems can do even with this modest Hardware set between these two devices is chalk and cheese from surveillance to the collaboration Suite to the backup operations from nas to NAS synchronization these are genuinely fully featured devices even with the realtech arm powerered base level Hardware inside in a way that overshadows the hell out of this and yes you will need to learn more and yes there is a learning curve and yes it will use up more of your time one way or another but in most cases if you understand what you need and you look at the feature set and you've got a larger group of users you think you're going to roll in surveillance you think you're going to move all of your operation for Communication email Document Handling backups and more into a single ecosystem man alive the disc station is the the best choice out there not just here up between these two but across a lot of other Nas brands in the market right now there is a reason sonology is a name in Cloud that you have heard of and ultimately between the two of them if that sounds like something that gets you excited and you're prepared to roll your sleeves and make the most of it these are a banging Choice overall but if it doesn't sound like something you're going to do it sounds like something you'll play with on day one and you just want something to sit in the corner and do its job the Beast station is a phenomenal Choice nonetheless thank you so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this let me know in the comments what you guys think are you opting for one of these or if you already got one I hope you found this video helpful if you haven't and you need more help there's lots of options open to you there's links to guides in the description there's also the free advice section at NAS Compares blue button on the right side of the screen alongside the nas Builder on top of that you can utilize our Discord or ask. Nas Compares Forum finally head over Kofi or patreon for not only expediated support options and access to our membership program where you get early access to these videos and our monthly zoom and private um um exclusive content but on top of that you can use the consultation option where you can set up a zoom with me or Eddie to help you spec out and understand the Right storage for your needs but apart from that thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 17,859

Keywords: 1-BAY NAS, Bee Drive, Bee Station Manager, BeeDrive, BeeDrive Review, Beestation Manager, Beestation Review, Best 1-Bay NAS, BSM, BST150, BST150 Review, BST150-1T, BST150-2T, BST150-4T, BST300-4T, BST300-8T, Cheap NAS, SYNOLOGY 1-Bay, Synology 2023, SYNOLOGY 2024, Synology BDM, Synology Bee, Synology Beestation, Synology Beestation Manager, Synology Beestation Review, Synology BSM, Synology BST150-4T, synology nas, Synology News, Synology vs wd, Value NAS, synology review

Id: ZYxtvzsd0J0

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024