External hard drives offer a lot of space but have their shortcomings. It’s tricky making data stored on an external hard drive accessible to multiple computers or streaming devices as external drives simply don’t have the hardware and software to offer that sort of flexibility. In comparison, a NAS can deliver audio and video to every device in your home. NAS devices can be cheap too, let’s take a look at the Synology DiskStation DS119j.

Synology DS119j

Single-bay device for flexible storage 

Synology is a NAS brand that is often ignored by budget-conscious buyers because of the initial price tag, but Synology devices are synonymous with features and quality. This single-bay Synology NAS offers an entry point to the world of quality data storage without breaking the bank. In fact, the Synology j-range offers most of the popular Synology features at a very low price point.

You can rest assured that you are getting a proper NAS, despite the affordable price point of this j-series Synology device. It features a front USB port, two USB ports at the back (should you want to add additional drives beyond its one-drive capacity) plus a network port so you can link it directly to your home network.


Synology DS119j Controls


How does it perform? 

For the pure purpose of storing stuff, this Synology NAS offers more than enough performance. Use it for the storage of photos, videos, and music and you’ll be just fine. Things get a little trickier if you want to use the DS119j as a media server as the built-in CPU is not exactly top-end.

OK, it’s impressive that such a cheap NAS comes loaded with a fully functional OS capable of all sorts of bells and whistles, but you need to appreciate that you are buying a budget device and that Plesk media server, for example, may struggle somewhat running on the DS199j.

As we said, use it for file storage alone and you get all the NAS flexibility you need. It’s easy to access your files via this device no matter where in your home you are, and you can expand storage if you need to use the USB ports on the box. However, if you have more advanced NAS requirements check out some of the other NAS devices we list on Gear-up.me.