The new Synology BeeStation Plus is the private cloud for those who want to bring home their files and have no time to spend managing a network storage (NAS) device.
The small device has some of the features of a NAS, without the complicated management required to keep it running.
Easy to install, the BeeStation Plus connects to your network using an Ethernet cable. Once connected you will be able to attach it to a Synology account, and manage it from a web portal.
Once you setup the BeeStation Plus you and up to eight other people in your family or circle of friends will have access to its 8 TB of storage, which can be used for documents, photos and videos.
Most of the access is via a Synology-hosted online portal, also used to manage its settings. This browser-based portal gives you access to BeeFiles and BeePhotos.
BeePhotos keeps your photos in order by using AI to automatically create albums based on people, location, tags and even subjects such as “mountains”, “night views”, “trains” and so on.
It also helps you identify people by recognising and grouping photos by asking you “Who is this person?”. This works well and it will recognise most people, although sometimes it might miss some photos. This happens if you have photos of your kid from their baby years until adulthood, in which case the AI won’t always recognise them at all their different ages. But don’t worry, you can always merge new photos with existing albums, increasing the recognition rates.
You can also create albums based on any combination of those attributes, so you can easily create an album like “Dad in Los Angeles” or “Dogs in Wellington”.
But BeePhotos does not offer a Shared photo storage, so each person will have their own photos, independent from the others.
The browser-based BeeFiles allows you to manage all your files from a single location, regardless if they were originally stored on a computer, tablet or phone. If the file was synchronised to the BeeStation Plus, you will see it here.
BeeFiles also allows you to synchronise files from some cloud services, like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. This is interesting because it ensures you have access to those files even if you’re locked out of those cloud accounts.
The BeeStation Plus has USB-A and USB-C ports on the back, so you can plug external drives. You can then directly access their contents from the browser or configure the system to automatically back the external drives to the BeeStation Plus when plugged in.
In addition to the browser-based interface, there are desktop and mobile apps available.
The BeeStatin for Desktop application synchronises your files between your computer and the BeeStation Plus. The application allows you to select and synchronise multiple directories.
You can also use the BeeFile and BeePhotos mobile apps, to synchronise both documents and photos from your phone or tablet.
Multiple levels of data protection are available. On the first level you can recover a file that you have accidentally deleted by browsing the BeeFiles Recycle Bin. At the next level, the system automatically creates snapshots of your files, so you can restore any of them to a previous version or point in time.
At the top level you can use the BeeProtect backup. This subscription service creates encrypted backups of the entire drive to Synology’s C2 cloud infrastructure. You can at any time browse the backup and restore a single file, or in case of a catastrophic failure, you can replace the BeeStation Plus and recover the entire backup into the new device.
The BeeStation Plus comes with a three-month BeeProtect trial, and you can then decide to keep it or not.
If you don’t want to synchronise the BeeStation Plus to your computer you can map the folders as drives, thanks to remote access.
Another interesting feature is the built-in Plex media server. Once enabled, up to 50% of the drive capacity can be used to store media files, such as movies and music. You can then access this content using a Plex client on your TV, tablet or phone.
The BeeStation Plus platform is based on an Intel Celeron J4125, which is interesting because it comes with a built-in Intel UHD 600 GPU, which supports hardware decoding your Plex content, if needed. The system comes with 4 GB RAM, non-expandable.
In real-life, the synchronisation is really fast. For my test I had the BeeStation Plus installed at home, with a 900 Mbps down/500 Mbps up connection. Browsing photos from the phone seems fluid, even when accessing the storage remotely. Plex streaming was reliable and worked well even when I was using my phone on a 4G connection.
The device is extremely quiet and you only see a single white LED, which thankfully just stays steady while powered on.
Definitely a non-nonsense device for those who want to keep their data closer at home.
