Having never really had any experience with NAS boxes, I was a bit dubious and excited at the same time. Dubious due to my preconceived stigma that such a device requires lengthy and complicated installation and excited at the prospect of setting up such a device and taking advantage of the features that a NAS has to offer.

What I can report is that those concerns I had were absurd and quickly forgotten. Synology, with their assistant, guides you through each of the numerous feature set-ups in a very informative manner. So, even for a novice (like myself) getting the unit up and running was easy.

The integrated software with the DS410 – DiskStation Manager - makes managing the NAS easy and very accessible. Whether you need FTP, HTTP or Surveillance access. It’s there and what makes these features so appealing is the fact they are also very easy to set-up.

Working out whether the DS410 is good value for money is a hard decision to make. For home users the price is on the steep side, and there are other units offering similar features for less. But for business users the DS410 is good value. It has a wide array of features including the ability to support up to 12 surveillance cameras.

Well there we have it, in a nutshell the DS410 is a fantastic NAS box, it comes with a wealth of features, is versatile and due to there being great support via the integrated software, configuring it is ever so easy. For these reasons, I award the Synology DS410 the Gold Award.

Pros
+ Extremely easy to set up
+ Packed with features
+ Visually attractive
+ Great for surveillance

Cons
- Big price for home users
- Top and bottom HDD not in direct airflow