gdgt

It's for speed demons only, and the omission of USB 3.0 smacks of penny-pinching at this price. If you're an average user who doesn't need the expansion capabilities, the nearly as fast but less pricey DS212+ probably makes more sense.

Smaller businesses and power users get a lot of bang for the buck with the DS712+.

The DiskStation DS712+ is one of the best dual-bay NAS servers on the market, for both home and office environments. It's also one of the few that offer storage scalability for those who want to start small and add more capacity later.

It’s hard to argue with the DS712+’s performance and software flexibility. The hardware is compact and easy to set up, quiet in operation, and the data throughput is strong. Synology’s DiskStation Manager is hands-down the best NAS interface we’ve seen.

Ultimately casual users should stick to the company's budget friendly DS211j, but speed freaks looking to future proof their NAS without spending a small fortune will be well rewarded.

The 712+ is an impressive NAS with an extensive feature set and high performance. But it doesn't represent a huge leap in performance over the DS710+ it replaces. Synology just as much acknowledges this by pricing them both just about the same.