Testing:

For testing purposes, the Synology DS1515 was connected to a network where all wired devices feature Gigabit network adapters, and all cabling is done with CAT6 grade cables. Four CAT6 cables were used to connect the DS1515 to a Netgear branded 16-port Gigabit smart switch (but link aggregation was not enabled). The computer used to access the NAS for the tests in this review was also connected directly to this switch with a CAT6 cable.



Testing will compare the performance of the Diskstation DS1515 with that of the following other NAS servers...

» Diskstation DS414slim 4-bay NAS server
» Diskstation DS415+ 4-bay NAS server
» WD Sentinel DX4200 4-bay NAS server
» Thecus N5500 5-bay NAS server
» Diskstation DS415play 4-bay NAS server
» Diskstation DS414j 4-bay NAS server
» Thecus N2310 2-bay NAS server

Power Consumption:

All of the NAS servers took their turn getting plugged in to a Seasonic Power Angel monitoring device in order to get real time information on the current drawn while in use. The device was tested in three conditions... 1) While the device was active - reading and writing data from two different clients in order to keep the drives spinning, 2) with the device idle - where it is fully powered up but with no active data transfers, and 3) in hibernation mode - where the disks have spun down due to inactivity to conserve electricity. Devices that do not support hibernation show an "N/A" to indicate it could not complete that part of the test.



Despite having five drives, the DS1515 is fairly energy efficient when at idle and when active. 42W at idle isn't the best here, but all things considered I think it is pretty impressive. What was odd though, is that despite enabling hibernation mode to kick in after ten minutes, and unplugging the network cables after 30 minutes to make sure there was no activity - the Power Angel showed that the draw only dropped from 42W to 40W.