Synology Reviews 

I had Synology DS218 with RAID1 config. So basically two drives one for replication.

Since we moved house, the 7 year old DS stopped recognizing my drives. I always used to think that at least there is a replication so at least one drive should be functional in crisis situations.

But both drives have stopped being recognised. I tried connecting them directly to my computer using. SATA USB adaptor but still the hdd is not being recognised.

Synology blames WD for the HDD and vice versa. I am still with no option to recover data from my dead drives

The hardware is OK, but the operating system is extremely buggy and doesn't provide stable and easy to use cloud service in diverse network environments. It is not designed for normal end users and unless you have extensive experience with network administration it won't be much of a help.

The synology chat support sucks and asks you weird questions like "Are you connecting other site than where NAS locates or connecting from another Wi-Fi of the same LAN?" ... as if that is not the main reason to have a cloud service?!

Please invest your money in better designed and tested cloud services like Google Drive or iCloud.

Worst investment ever! The OS is a disaster to figure out and the community is toxic. They blame the user for being dumb even though we just asking for help... I'm a tech-guy and can say right away that it's overly complicated. How are we supposed to learn this "Inception" crap? Watching YouTube videos for weeks so I can learn coding and stuff? really??? I want to do very basic stuff but that is somehow asking too much. Apparently need a bunch of apps and also do stuff in windows DOS to interact and bla bla... Don't understand why people recommend this product at all, feels like the OS is unfinished and unpolished, and spiraled out of control so far that they just can't figure out their own spaghetti-codes, and then letting people figure stuff out them selves. The people who know know won't share, only insult...

We purchased a Synology NAS DS124. This is advertised as taking 2.5" and 3.5" disks. We use 2.5" SSDs in all our NASs. We took this back to the office, only to find there is no way to fit a 2.5" disk. One has to go back and purchase an accessory to fit this disk. But, retailers don't carry stock of this accessory. So, the customer is stuffed around, buying a product that cannot be used, and is not fit for purpose. Further more, we were told the accessory (Caddy) costs $19. So, when Synology advertises a price for the DS124, they fail to include the price of the caddy. So, this mis-represents the true price, and is in breach of Australian Consumer law. If you use 2.5" disks, and want to make the NAS workable, you have to go back to the retailer, ask them to order the part in, then wait for an indeterminate time for it to arrive... then pay for the part that should have been included in the first place. Very dissatisfied with Synology.

Frustration all the way . It loaded up ok then lost connection ( not my end ) and just won’t go back online . I have spent hours in this damned thing and it’s only been here 3 days .
Returning it because it is unreliable and support is non existent except for a bot
Website isn’t much help
Sending it back . I would not wish this on anyone

I bought a 2-bay NAS but had no end of problems with it disconnecting. It would be connected in the morning and randomly disconnected by the afternoon.

I'm using a MacBook and the support for Synology NAS's doesn't appear to be great. I have to manually connect the drives in Finder but, if I reboot, then those connections drop off. If I put those connections in my Open at Login list (as the support pages suggest) then that works but then I get error messages at login when my laptop's not at home (and four Finder windows are opened, one for each share, when I do login at home. Eugh.)

The transfer speed was very very slow. My Time Capsule backup takes a few minutes, but the Synology NAS was predicting over 100 hours for its first backup. I tried using CCC as a backup instead with the NAS, and that was predicting 98 hours. So it was clearly something with the drive.

I wanted to use it wirelessly and there are Synology support articles saying this is possible and listing supported wireless dongles. I read this, bought one of the recommended dongles, but then it wasn't recognised by the NAS. I went to Reddit this time where users were pointing out that Synology dropped wireless dongle support with DSM 7, presumably because they want to sell you a NAS with wireless on the board. Lame. Especially lame that they left the wireless dongle compatibility articles up on their site.

Through all of this, Synology support was no help at all. I returned that NAS and the drives for a refund. Two years later, I thought I would try again. I thought the problems must have been due to my laptop / router / some configuration thing, as I couldn't believe that the Synology experience could really be that bad. So I bought a DS223j this time. By this time I was in a new house with a different router and internet, a brand new machine with a clean install, yet I had the same problems that I had had 3 years earlier!

So, I had to return the NAS and the drives again. What a huge pain and a waste of my time this has been! I'm a Director of Engineering with 40 years experience, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with finding solutions to technical problems. All I wanted was a replacement for my Time Capsule. It's a pretty simple ask of a NAS. I just want to have network storage volumes appear in Finder when I'm at home, and have them silently disappear when I'm not. Is this really too much to ask from a consumer product like the DS223j?

I asked informations on their software which were not clearly explained on their website. My provider told me I could use Synology software to satisfy my needs. The live chat support didn't answer my questions and told me to address my questions to my provider.

Thank you for your very swift reply and answering my stupid questions as I could not find the info myself.

The photos app is brilliant. I used to use Google Picasa but this has been discontinued. It worked well but not as well as your photos app. I love the fact that it just works without the pc being connected. I have 65000 plus photos and I wanted to find mostly my late wife's photos. I am now finding photos that I had forgotten about and I am loving it. I cannot believe that you do not charge. I have been looking around for quite some time for an app. They are relatively expensive and so complicated that they are impossible to use. All I wanted was a simple app to recognise faces reasonably accurately and then let me browse them. Your app is brilliantly accurate and very simple to use. Thank you.

All I can say is thank you I am delighted with the app and my NAS drives

I not that there are lots of negative reviews I think that people do not understand how this works. I have over 65000 photos and with a bit of support form customer service my NAS drive is not only effeicient but is is gery quick This app is free with the NAS drive what more do you want

This company has great U.I. but they force you into buying they're own HDDs. This happened when DSM 7.0 arrived. We had IronWolf Pro drives, which are great drives for the price and never had issues with DSM 6 . After the update we started having issue after issue, degraded volumes and even unrecoverable data. We also sent this twice because 3 of the HDD's brackets apparently came damaged, it took around 6 weeks for each RMA, forcing us to buy another server in the meanwhile for backups. The issue was solved temporarily on the second attempt, the third attempt we just quit. This is not a professional solution anymore, there are much more reliable brands out there and we are currently trying to sell all our Synology servers because of that. Also, the support assistance is nothing but a joke. Do not buy this brand products, it almost destroyed my business and caused me a lot of stress.

This review is not so much a dig at their products or customer service, but their delivery company UPS. If you actually want to buy one of their products, order it from Amazon or any other reseller who uses a reliable courier such as DPD. Don't order from their own store. My current order is sitting in their UPS's London distribution centre and has been for four days. The tracking information states 'Delayed for one business day' with no current delivery date.

Really bad customer service with unhelpful staff. Rediculus time limit on the phone supports with always refering you to articles that are too technical and not helpful. Disappointing.

Synology NAS devices are unreliable. I have had two rack stations that have bricked themselves because of faulty chips. I stupidly bought a DS923+ to replace one of the rack stations and that has a habit of going to sleep and not waking. The status light is green, the power button steady blue but no disc lights. Contacting Synology help they just say the Seagate IronWolf drives I have installed are not supported. Look at the supported drives and then try and find one! Utterly useless and not worth the money. Get an Asustor instead. Much more reliable and more user friendly.

I’ve been with synology for over 8 years now and I find the apps really poorly designed.

The latest photos app has just knock out my NAS for four days and now won’t load the correct folders anymore.

You get a couple of clumsy bits of advice and then they want full remote access and 2FA security turned off.

Same thing over and over again.

I wouldn’t buy again.

Purchased a DS218+ recertified NAS from them and it keeps failing, first data poll has crashed, yet both HDD in drive are registering good on the diagnostics and SMART, swopped out drives, got another fault disk not present but a restart and it was working again twice today from 4am it starts bleeping really loud with a fault, and a restart and it works for a bit, but shows no error in notifications, then it starts again, have not gone 2 days without incident yet and worse as the NAS is in my bedroom I am having to get up in the night to reset it when it beeps continually and VERY LOUD support is a Joke, I am sick of manufactures and in this case sellers as I purchased direct from Synology not having any way to contact them by phone. To make thing worse, their live chat is always greyed out on website and not available even during hours it is supposed to be.
to sum up their support,
No Phone support
No "chat" website support
No email support
You can submit a request online that at best will be answered by a link to a website (go sort it out yourself we can't be bothered) that is not relevant and if you reply to an email it will bounce back thats if they even bother to respond, next thing you get is your case is closed!

I have been following the Synology since 2021 and it's just amazing. The products are user-friendly. You can easily set-up, work on these units whether it's DS units or Routers or HDDs. The branding of products is such that you can keep these units so close to you. Their site also has all the information about how to setup their products, resolves some common issues, which are explained in detail. Coming to their support, the way Synology treats its customers is amazing. Whole time the support is available to answer the questions or concerns whether it's hardware or software related.
Thank you,

I’ve been a customer of Synology for the past few years and never asked for help until now.
I’m disabled, relay massively on my nas and I was extremely worried as it kept shutting down on its own.
The messages were saying there was a power failure but this wasn’t factual.
I contacted Synology for help and was connected to a person called Sam.
I explained my concerns, my situation and the issues I was having.
I was asked to run a memory test which failed, I sent over all the logs.
I continually asked for a fault reference number so I could log this issue with retailer BT / EE.
Sam ignored my request and still hasn’t supplied the information even though he deemed the NAS has a hardware fault.
I also sent him purchase information - he informed that the warranty ran out a few days ago, YES A FEW DAYS AGO.
I was absolutely furious so a few days out of warranty my NAS died and Synologys answer is go away.
Is this how Synology treat disabled customers with cancer ?

one star minimum is a little wrong when talking about Synology.
While the product was under warranty, they claimed that everything was fine, just problems with the firmware. as soon as the warranty is over, they say, - “we have nothing to do with it, you need a new NAS”
Old cases are deleted from your account and you can no longer prove that there was a problem even under warranty.

Great customer support ! Unless your are a network wizard or IT guru, NAS is daunting. The help I received from Synology allowed to get up and running after flailing around on my own. Very much appreciated!

so bad i would rather HACK MY EYES OUT than buy another synology as it would be less painfull

My D218+ Synology Nas has run like a charm since day one, and every call I have made to them for customer service has been very good. They were able to troubleshoot the minor connection issues I had on 3 different occasions after power outages and helped me self-repair the device. I personally have never had a negative experience and intend to upgrade to a larger NAS from Synology soon.