It is the "heart" of my home for over 3 years now (previously I had a lower model from the same company that I replaced due to slow response in the user interface - not in the applications) as soon as I realized that it is the most useful thing for my everyday life and it is worth investing in it.

Honestly, if it breaks, I would buy it again. Perfect for a home solution. It has two bays, but I don't see a reason to create complex arrays (RAID) at home unless you need it for another purpose (where, for example, you don't want yourself or your employees to be offline for a second if you lose a hard drive - office solutions). Besides, NAS is not the solution for backup, but a smart addition (one of the best) to the backup strategy you should have (with 3 different devices - PCs, hard drives, etc., one of which is outside the house) and a perfect central storage medium (well, the medium is still the hard drive).

The things you can do with this tool and the apps offered by Synology, most people haven't even imagined (I am still discovering) and they don't know how much it can help them.

Here are some examples:
- Recorder for up to 6 compatible cameras... all kinds of backup or file synchronization programming from and to PCs, USB HDDs, online services (like Dropbox)... the ultimate media and file hub in your home. You have everything there and you can access it anytime on any device connected to your network (TV, PC, mobile, tablet, speakers, etc.)... if you want, you can have all your files, open them, download them, edit them, and upload them back to the NAS wherever you are in the world, as long as you connect to the internet on a secure Wi-Fi network or 4G-5G (eliminating the need to have a mobile phone with a large storage capacity for photos or a cloud program if you don't trust them, as soon as you run out of space, you can send and store them with a button (yes, it also eliminates cables) at home - just make sure it doesn't consume all your internet program :-P... similarly, access, view, and download all the thousands of photos, MP3s, or movies you have at home anytime on your mobile phone, wherever you are!)... Plex server... download station (you can start downloading anything you find in the application you configure to search wherever you want, at home, anytime. You can schedule them to download, for example, when everyone is asleep and you don't need the internet, and wake up with everything downloaded in the location you have chosen... specialized solutions like email server, VPN, Python, Docker, Homebridge, virtual machine for other functions that I won't analyze...

Here, I have to say, because many people consider it as a Plex server, that it makes Plex unnecessary or even redundant, as through the Video Station and the DS Video app (and also DS Audio), it scans your entire library and presents it with covers, summaries, connections to IMDb, with sorting options like what you haven't seen yet, etc., and of course, it plays it normally on your network or remotely! It's really a very good application, like all of them!

The combination of the above (many of which Synology does all of them) with the good speeds (expandable RAM and processor) make this particular model ideal for someone who wants some or all of these functions.

The device's configuration is done through a web interface on a computer or laptop (imagine accessing your router but in a completely user-friendly environment with icons, etc.) where you can customize everything.

I repeat, if you want it for home use, it's perfect. It's not just a backup. It's one of the best backup tools, but it's much more than that. You have everything there, you keep one or two backups elsewhere (automatically scheduled from the NAS), and you're in control. That's how the times are now, and we need multiple solutions for our thousands of valuable files that we would lose overnight (all hard drives will eventually fail). Of course, you should use specialized hard drives in the NAS that are designed to work 24/7 (like WD Red or equivalent).

Personally, I back up the NAS to an external hard drive of the same size, scheduled and encrypted, and to my old NAS that I have in another house, remotely and encrypted, only for this purpose. The PC plays a supporting role with some folder synchronizations (this requires special attention to avoid losing files) and individual backups.

To avoid any misunderstandings, you can also create a two-disk array with just the NAS (where one disk is a backup of the other), but that alone is not a 100% reliable backup solution (definitely not a complete backup solution). Personally, I prefer my second backup medium to be outside the NAS because I consider it more likely (no matter how unlikely it may be, it can happen) that both disks inside the NAS will fail simultaneously compared to one disk inside the NAS and one external HDD or in a PC.

In simple terms, with two disks inside the NAS in the appropriate array for backup, if one disk fails, you can continue as if nothing happened and replace the failed NAS hard drive (plug and play) with another one while the second disk continues to work. So, you don't lose anything from the aforementioned advantages of the NAS during the days until you get the new one. If you have one disk inside the NAS and the second one, which you use for backup from the NAS, is, for example, on the PC, if the NAS fails, then you simply don't have a NAS. However, you still have your files.

At this point, I should also mention SHR, which only Synology offers as an option and is very convenient compared to RAID 1 if you want to expand the capacity of your disks at some point or have the security of a second backup disk.

In summary, it eliminates/replaces cables, USB sticks, required mobile GB, tablets, camera recorders, paid cloud services, server-type services, etc. And it is the best for home media and file server, remote access to everything, and backup-synchronization strategies.