Synology BeeStation Plus review: Super-easy streaming & storage

Best Prices Today: Synology BeeStation Plus (8TB)

Want your own personal OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, or Google drive without the mega corporation or advanced network savvy that’s typically required? Perhaps you’re looking to set up a personal streamer for your massive collection of digital music and movies you’ve ripped from discs over the years. If you are, you should take a look at Synology’s BeeStation Plus, a NAS box that can operate as your own personal cloud and streaming service.

The BeeStation Plus not only allows you to access your data and personal media from anywhere and on any compute-capable device–laptop, mobile phone, tablet, and so on–it’s exceptionally easy to set up. You don’t even need to add storage, there’s already an 8TB hard disk drive inside.

The only possible issue is that Synology’s rigorous focus on simple-to-set-up-and-use means many of the features found in the company’s other NAS boxes are missing here. NAS aficionados–the acronym stands for Network Attached Storage, by the way–will care about that; the mainstream audience Synology is targeting with this product probably won’t.

Specifications and features

As you might have guessed from my introduction, the BeeStation Plus is a simplified NAS box and media server. Stripping out some of the other features that NAS boxes are known for render it much easier to set up and use than more robust products that might interest hardcore users or the SMB crowd (allow me to spell out that acronym, too: it stands for Small to Medium-sized Businesses). the BeeStation Plus is certainly easier to set up than any other NAS box I’ve tested. So much so that it probably deserves its own classification.

The box itself is a well-ventilated, rounded-corner, dark gray rectangle measuring 5.8 x 2.5 x 7.7 inches (HxWxD). It weighs in at just north of two pounds, with its mechanical hard drive no doubt accounting for most of that bulk.

The front and sides are barren except for logos, while on the back there’s the power button, USB-A and -C ports, a reset pinhole, a gigabit ethernet port, and a power jack.

There’s no video output, as some boxes have, so your only access to the files stored on the box is through Synology’s online portal and its local client apps, at least initially. You can enable SMB access to reach the unit locally via Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS) as well as via a browser without routing through the portal after initial setup. (In this context, the acronym SMB stands for the protocol Server Message Block.)

The BeeStation Plus will serve as a destination for macOS Time Machine backups (with a 4TB limit), and the local desktop client will sync folders to the BeeStation. There are also BeeFiles apps for backing up your Android and iOS devices.

Synology offers a full backup option in BeeProtect, an online storage service that costs $120 per year for up to 8TB ($60 for the 4TB BeeStation model). Those prices aren’t half bad given the amount of storage get, but there’s a 3-month free trial if you want to give it a test drive first.

Less obvious is the small text link below the BeeProtect ad that tells you that you can also back up to external storage, another NAS box, or Synology’s own C2 cloud storage service if you have an account. But only one is allowed; so without BeeProtect, you’ll need to improvise a third copy of your data.

That makes this as good a time as any to remind you that this is single hard disk drive storage that must be backed up if there’s any irreplaceable data on it. While HDDs are far more reliable than they used to be, they’re still mechanical devices and far more prone to failure than SSDs.

The BeeStation Plus supports up to eight users, and each one gets their own private storage area. At the moment, the only functionality beyond file storage and backup is media streaming via Plex media server (with a 4TB limit on media files). More on that in a bit.

Note that when you attach external storage, it doesn’t show up until you utilize a function that requires it. The storage section of the interface didn’t show either of the USB SSDs I attached, though I could still use them for transfer functions and see them as USBShares in Windows Explorer and macOS Finder.

The BeeStation desktop app will create a local folder that later syncs with the BeeStation’s internal storage, a la DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and other services. Basically, this is for performance: Transfers across the local network will be relatively snappy without it, not so much across the internet

The BeeStation Plus is NAS for people who don’t know, care about, or care to learn about NAS. Plug in its power cord and an ethernet cable, follow the prompts, and you’re good to go. Mostly.

How easy is the BeeStation Plus to set up?

The BeeStation Plus setup, while not the browse-to-a-local-URL (e.g., 192.168.1.101) approach I’m accustomed to, is by far the easiest I’ve encountered. At least for the basics. And by “easier-than,” I’m including personal cloud devices from industry stalwarts such as Seagate and Western Digital. No, the “personal cloud” pitch is not new.

To get underway, you first surf to the Synology BeeStation Web portal. (There’s a QR code for mobile devices, although it just takes you to Synology’s website.) Next, you create an account, and then download the desktop app. You’ll need to be physically close to the BeeStation for a couple of steps, including the one below.

One-time setup is rather tedious, but the wizard-like approach ensures that even the least experienced user can get the BeeStation Plus up and running.

That said, I did find one step to be puzzling: With all of the focus on ease of use, why would Synology force you to tediously download and install the operating system? Just pre-load it at the factory and have it check for updates, guys.

Anyway, setting up the Plex media server (for streaming movies, music, and photos) isn’t quite as easy as getting online and connecting. Mostly because it’s less-than-intuitively located under the heading “Integration” in the main web page. Perhaps it would be better to label this “Apps,” Synology?

Also, as Plex is currently the only app available and intimately linked to the BeeStation Plus’ usefulness, why isn’t it pre-installed?

Tip: Use the BeeStation’s “Upload media files to Plex” function, which opens the browser-based BeeFiles at the correct location. If you try to add media within the Plex server, you’ll be confronted with a rather daunting list of Linux system folders that precede the folders you actually want. Assuming of course, you would actually know what those folders were.

As mentioned above, if you want to use Windows Explorer/macOS Finder to manage files instead of a web browser or Synology’s desktop app, you’ll need to enable local access and SMB in the BeeStation web portal’s advanced settings. Why it’s disabled to begin with, I can’t say.

I’m very accustomed to local SMB folder access, so I turned that on. But to be honest, I often found the web browser interface and BeeFiles easier to use. It supports drag-0and-drop file transfers and you don’t need to guess which folder is which.

How easy is the BeeStation to use?

While it’s not as dead easy as the initial setup, using the BeeStation is certainly easier than your run-of-the-mill NAS box, including handy dedicated functions for transferring your media from existing online services; specifically, those used by Android and iOS devices. That will cover most folks. I must say that iCloud support was a bit of a surprise. Apple is famous for denying access to third parties.

Viewing your media files, and even PDF and Office files, can be done via the web portal, right within the browser. It’s remarkably quick given a local network connection, which the BeeStation automatically uses if available.

What NAS features are missing from the BeeStation Plus?

What became obvious during my hands-on time is that the BeeStation Plus is either a software work-in-progress (should sales warrant it), or laser focused on being a personal cloud and nothing else.

That’s admirable and great for the target audience, but there’s a lot missing that you could have in a perhaps less friendly, more traditional NAS box such as Synology’s own single-bay DS124.

Just some of the missing features are: Hybrid Backup/Sync (software that backs up remote computers without the need for local clients), security camera surveillance, virtualization (Docker and the like), BitTorrent, two-way sync, the HybridMount cloud storage manager, access to other network locations, and quite a lot more.

Also missing is the ability to expand internal storage. Multi-bay NAS boxes allow you to add drives, and/or mirror them for increased safety and availability. All this makes a strong case for advanced users to go old-school.

What’s this portal thing you’re rattling on about?

Portals are remote servers that relay data from one location/URL to another. Basically, you log in to the portal with your data source device (e.g., the BeeStation Plus), which registers its existence, your ownership, and its internet location. Then, when you log on to the portal with your other devices and the appropriate client, the portal directs traffic to/from the data-serving device.

Portals generally provide web interfaces that allow you to configure them, as well as manage the files on the server. The BeeStation Plus’ portal is top notch in both regards.

The major upsides to portals are ease of setup and hassle-free access from anywhere (given internet freedom, which is not universal). You also needn’t unduly expose your server (the BeeStation) to the internet, as you would if you configured your router to forward ports to it. Said configuration can also be quite trepidatious for less experienced users.

On the other hand, I can name at least two portals (Cisco NAS, and PogoPlug) that disappeared, rendering the products that relied on them far less useful.

Additionally, your info is passing through someone else’s servers, which could potentially lead to data breaches. Companies can promise all the security and encryption in the world, but when all is said and done, if they decide they want to access your data, they can.

That comment is not aimed at Synology in the slightest, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the company. It’s simply inherent to the technology and it also applies to Microsoft, Google, Apple, and every other company in the modern connected world.

How much does the BeeStation Plus cost?

The 8TB BeeStation Plus retails for $409, which isn’t a ton more than Synology’s own single-bay DS124 when populated with an 8TB HDD (around $340 combined). There’s also a far more affordable 4TB BeeStation for $209 available if you think that will hold your movie, image, and music collections.

As HDDs are available in up to 36TB these days, I’m a bit surprised there aren’t more capacious options. The BeeStation Plus is warrantied for three years, which includes the HDD as far as I can tell.

How fast is the BeeStation Plus?

The BeeStation’s gigabit ethernet and hard drive are more than fast enough for most file operations, as well as for streaming media.

Indeed, the data rates required for multimedia delivery aren’t nearly as great as some might think. Even streamed 4K video is generally only several megabytes per second, depending on the codec. Blu-ray can be much higher, but that’s a different beast. Audio requires far less bandwidth, and images a relative trickle.

The BeeStation Plus clocked in at around 115 megabytes per second reading, and 90- to 100MBps writing. That’s slightly below average for a gigabit box, but it’s still in the ballpark. Transfer speeds to and from a remote location will, of course, depend on your broadband connection.

AmorphousDiskMark was largely in agreement with Disk Speed test (shown above) when it came to transfers across my home 2.5Gbps network. An Apple Studio with an M4 Max and a 10Gbps ethernet port was at the other end.

The Intel Celeron J4125 CPU made the web interface quite responsive. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised at how quick the BeeStation Plus navigated, downloaded apps, and changed settings. The latter especially can be laggardly on NAS boxes.

I had several people simultaneously test the Plex streaming and there were no issues. Admittedly, it was all 1080p video and music, and you might get fewer streams with 4K in play. But there were no complaints.

In total, the BeeStation Plus will get the job done handily, although I wouldn’t complain if it had a 2.5Gbps ethernet port.

Should you buy the BeeStation Plus?

If you want an easy-to-set-up-and-use personal cloud for file access, media streaming and viewing both in your home and from afar, either the BeeStation Plus or the smaller-capacity BeeStation are fantastic options.

Tech-savvy users who want more server-grade features will be better off with a straight-up NAS box that offers far greater capabilities, likely for a few less bucks. There’s also less chance that such a product could end up orphaned.

Best Prices Today: Synology BeeStation Plus (8TB)