Designed for use as a personal cloud storage device, Synology’s BeeStation makes it easy to access your photos, videos, and other personal files from anywhere. Unlike other Synology network attached storage (NAS) devices, the BeeStation does not offer RAID protection; nor does it have an app library to complement it. Instead, it makes it easy to automatically back up your data and share it with other users without paying monthly cloud subscription fees. At $219.99, it’s cheaper (though potentially slower) than the similar LatticeWork Amber X, which makes it a good deal for those who want to stop paying for a cloud subscription to access their personal data. Its strengths are in its simplicity and savings; if those are not your priorities as an advanced user, consider spending just a few dollars more to get true NAS functionality—including RAID protection, multi-gig LAN, and a catalog of apps—with devices like the $239 QNAP TS-216G dual-bay NAS. Just bear in mind that the QNAP, like most NAS drives, doesn’t include the drives themselves. The BeeStation gets you 4TB out of the box.
Design: A Simple Black Box
The BeeStation uses a black enclosure that measures 5.8 by 2.4 by 7.7 inches (HWD) and has a BeeStation logo on either side. You’ll find a small LED indicator on the front, near the bottom, that is solid white when the drive is ready and functioning correctly, blinks white when it is booting up or shutting down, and pulses white when the drive is in hibernation. A solid orange LED indicates that the BeeStation is resetting; a blinking orange LED indicates a drive error; and a breathing orange LED indicates a firmware update.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The rear panel is home to a power button, a power port, a reset button, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen port, and a 1GbE LAN port. You won’t find any multi-gig LAN ports on this device. The BeeStation is powered by a 2GHz Realtek ARM quad-core CPU, 1GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 4TB Synology-branded internal drive. The sealed drive spins at a relatively slow 5,400rpm and is not upgradable. Also, note that because it uses a single drive, the BeeStation does not offer the multi-drive mirroring or other RAID protection you get with a traditional multi-bay NAS. The box includes a power supply, a LAN cable, and a quick-start guide.
The BeeStation forgoes Synology’s DSM operating system, found on most of its other NAS devices, and instead uses the BeeStation OS, which offers a combination of web, desktop, and mobile applications to access and manage your data and back up files directly from your phone and from cloud services such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. You can also back up data from connected USB drives. The BeePhoto mobile application will automatically back up your photos on the fly, or if you have many photos, you can have the app do it when you are inactive. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner of the Photos tab, select Upload, and select the photos you want to add to your BeeStation drive.
BeePhotos lets you create albums and links to share individual photos or an entire album; you can also have the app play a slideshow of photos in an album. The software uses face recognition technology to add photos to a People album, where you can put a name to a face for easy organization. With the Photo Request feature, you can create a link to have other users share their photos with you; they’ll be added to a specific BeeStation album.
(Credit: Synology/John R. Delaney)
The BeeFiles app acts as a file manager for all your stored data. You can use it to create folders; upload and share files, photos, and videos; rename and export files; and move files back and forth between the BeeStation and other devices. The app makes it easy to back up files from your phone, external drives, computers, cloud servers, and NAS devices.
The BeeStation Desktop application lets you manage your BeeStation data using a Windows PC or Mac. When you open it, you’ll see a list of recent activity (downloads and uploads) and any notifications. Tap the gear icon to open the control panel to view and select folder paths for backups from your desktop. Here, you can also back up your desktop files to BeeFiles or BeePhotos; view logs of all backups, uploads, and downloads; and transfer photos from Google Photos, iCloud Photos, a computer folder, a USB drive, or a NAS. You can also see how much BeeStation storage is available.
(Credit: Synology)
The BeeStation uses snapshot technology to automatically create restore points that allow you to revert to a previous backup set if necessary. For added data protection, you can back up your BeeStation to an external drive or to a Synology NAS, or you can subscribe to the BeeProtect cloud service. For $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year, you get automatic backups regardless of available BeeStation storage, with up to eight backup sets stored (daily backups from the past week, plus one from the previous week).
Testing the Synology BeeStation: Easy (But Leisurely) Photo Backups
Installing the BeeStation couldn’t be easier. I started by scanning the QR on the QuickStart guide, but you can also use a web browser to go to portal.bee.synology.com/setup and create a Synology account. (f you already have an account, you can log in using those credentials, or you can use your Google or Apple ID.) I connected the device to my 2.5GbE network switch, which is also connected to my router and to my desktop PC, and tapped It’s Connected.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
I then powered up the BeeStation, confirmed that the LED was orange, and pressed and held the power button for four seconds. The app informed me that it was preparing the BeeStation and performed a 15-minute firmware update, after which I was prompted to give the device a name. I tapped Connect and was instructed to open a browser to enable Auto Update, Data Protection, and Local Access. I downloaded the BeeFiles and BeePhotos apps onto my phone, and the installation was complete.
The BeeStation worked well in testing. Photos were immediately backed up and added to my specified folder. The device needed 4.5 minutes to backup my iPhone camera roll, which contained 230 photos and 10 videos. That’s nearly twice as long as the Amber X needed, but the Amber X uses a speedy solid-state drive compared with the BeeStation’s spinning hard drive.
The BeeStation’s slow drive and 1GbE LAN port delivered lukewarm results on our file transfer tests. We use a 4.9GB folder containing a mix of music, video, photo, and office document files to measure NAS read and write performance. It delivered 92MBps on both the write and read tests. The SSD-equipped AmberX was faster (113MBps write, 222MBps read), as was the QNAP 216G (233MBps write, 196MBps read) thanks to its 2.5GbE LAN connection. The Asustor AS5402T delivered the best overall performance with scores of 245MBps (write) and 222MBps (read).
Verdict: Good-Value Basic Backup and Sharing
With the Synology BeeStation, you can create your own personal cloud storage solution within minutes without paying any monthly subscription fees. The BeePhoto and BeeFiles mobile apps are user-friendly and make it easy to back up and share your photos, videos, and documents with other users from your phone, while the BeeStation Desktop app lets you manage your data from your desktop PC. You won’t get blazing performance with this device (it has one drive inside, and it’s a platter drive), but it favors ease of use over performance, and in that regard, it hits the mark.
If you require a NAS device to expand as your storage needs grow, consider the similarly priced QNAP TS-216G dual-bay NAS. It offers RAID protection and a catalog of apps that let you use it as a media server, a cloud server, and more. That said, our Editors’ Choice pick for two-bay NAS devices, the Asustor AS5402T, offers better performance, a pair of multi-gig LAN ports, and more apps, all for $369. Again, though: Factor in the cost of the separate hard drives you’ll have to add to those NAS units to get up and running. If 4TB is enough capacity for you, and mirrored redundancy isn’t what you need, making a beeline for the BeeStation could be a better value play.
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The Bottom Line
The excellent Synology BeeStation doesn’t have the deep feature set of a typical NAS device, but it’s easy to use and can help you replace subscription-based cloud storage in a snap.
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About John R. Delaney
Contributing Editor
