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Synology DS119j review

Nas box presents no nasty surprises

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ds119j img1
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There are a vast array of network-attached storage (NAS) devices on the market. While there are some devices that can run into the thousands of pounds, there are some keenly-priced boxes on the market.

This is where the latest DS119j from Synology lies. It comes with a single drive bay, boasts a plastic white chassis, and comes with Synology’s DiskStation Manager software. There are also loads of apps that can be installed and used with the NAS.

The chassis is enclosed rather than an open box with a removable drive bay. There are no ports on the front — just an LED status indicator layout. The rear of the NAS houses the single fan, two USB 2.0 ports, LAN, as well as power input.

Specs-wise, the Synology DS119J NAS Drive sports a Marvel A3720 Dual-core 800 MHz processor and, 256MB memory.

You can add pretty much any modern hard drive. we’re using a bundled 3.5″ 4TB IronWolf drive from Seagate who is an official partner of Synology. The IronWolf is a NAS specific hard drive which is different from a desktop hard drive.

The DS119j is quite eco-friendly; it uses very little power. It uses as little as 5.01 watts when the drive hibernates and about 10 watts when it’s being accessed.

The set-up is simple. The unit requires power which is included and there is a Cat-5E cable included in the box too to plug it into your network. Then, you can download the Synology Assistant software from the Synology website and run it. This should find NAS drive within seconds and prompt the user to continue with the installation of DSM and the setup of an admin account within the Diskstation Manager software.

There is a range of mobile companion apps available. Best of all, these are free. Including the DDNS service which gives you an URL which is easy to remember. Also available to download are DS Audio, DS Photo, and DS Video, which enable you to stream all your media files to your mobile devices.

Overall, it only supports a single disk so it isn’t fault resilient. You can get around this by backing up this NAS to something like Amazon Glacier or even a locally attached USB drive. However, it is a great first step into using a NAS.

The Synology DS119j 1 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure is available from Amazon.