The Synology DiskStation DS1517+ may be overkill for most home users, but it's an excellent choice for small businesses that want to store and serve data locally. With five drive bays and a wide assortment of RAID options, you can double down on redundancy for extra protection or use it as a giant...

Solid performance; Intuitive management software; Lots of apps; Multiple RAID options; Expandable; Quiet

Expensive; Lacks on-board LCD panel

The Synology DiskStation DS1517+ is a 5-bay NAS designed for encryption and intensive tasks. Powered by a Quad-core 2.4GHz CPU with AES-NI hardware encryption engine, the DS1517+ comes equipped with quad 1GbE LAN ports and up to 16GB DDR3 RAM (dual channel).

PCI Express Expansion Slot adds versatility; Good price/performance

Single PCIe slot forces users to pick between 10G interconnects or dual m.2 SSD cache

Synology has done quite a decent job with the DS1517+. Of course, it's the first of what will be many 10Gbe solutions to make their way through the lab, so we aren't quite sure where it stands on this vacant landscape.

There's no question that the Synology DS1517+ is a great NAS solution for those who need more storage than the normal person. If you're the type who has hundreds of videos, thousands of high-quality pictures, and wants to take advantage of some virtualization, the DS1517+ is a great solution.

When deciding which of these products best meets your needs, factors other than performance or price may come into play. As we saw with the 10 GbE Ranker performance summary, each had category performance wins, but none of the wins were by a significant amount.

it's hard to overstate just how mind bogglingly awesome this nas box is. it's great on two main fronts: build quality of the hardware, but mostly the astounding software. i just downloaded the docker plugin through the robust browser ui and i'm up and running home automation in a docker container.

The Synology DS1517+ offers high end performance and expandability, but its price means it'll likely only appeal to users who can put its unique features to work.

PCIe slot upgrades; High spec hardware; Versatile software

Add-on cards can be expensive; Default 2GB RAM option is under specced; Strong competition from other Synology models

The last member of Synology's DiskStation Plus series of NAS drives we looked at was the 4-bay DS916+. This time we have the more business orientated DiskStation DS1517+, a quad core powered 5-bay NAS which has been designed to handle data intensive tasks such as on-the-fly encryption in the...

DSM OS; Btrfs file system support; Capacity can be expanded using Synology Expansion units; PCIe slot; Easy to access memory slots

Pricey

I've previously owned a 413j and other versions of Synology NASs. Overall the support and what they offer is great. However, choose the version you buy carefully!! I expected this version to have the same power saving features as the lesser 413j. It doesn't!!!

Using 5 x 4TB WD Red Drives with this Synology NAS unit. Easy to install and configure. Stable, works a charm. It's better to be left on so be sure to find a nice place for it, close to the router perhaps, to keep cable management clean and tidy.