Interview: Synology talks about strengthening consumer lineup and hard drive support on DS25-series NAS
Over the years, Synology has established a solid footprint in the prosumer and enterprise market with its reputable NAS storage and data backup solutions.
At COMPUTEX 2025, the Taiwanese-based company joins other tech giants in showcasing new product innovations and solutions at the Nangang Exhibition Hall.
We had the opportunity to talk to Jason Sin, Synology Malaysia Country Manager to find out what the company has to offer to consumers this year and talked about the controversial Synology hard drive support on its DS25-series NAS.
Q: Hey Jason, it’s great to be back at COMPUTEX this year, seeing you having a bigger booth every year and finally now in Nangang, it really shows the momentum that Synology is gaining every year on its products and solutions. Tell me, what do you have for the Malaysia consumer market this year?
Jason: We have loads to introduce to the Malaysia consumer market this year, we have the DS25-series NAS lineup which offers faster processing power than ever and 2.5 Gigabit ethernet connectivity.
Our Bee storage lineup has gotten better as well, the portable BeeDrive SSD now gains a new Deep Search AI feature with our own LLM, it helps users better find photos and files by describing them in a sentence that makes file management easier, the BeeDrive can now also backup photos from iCloud photos which will resolve storage issues that Apple users are facing without paying for pricey subscription fees.
Our BeeStation home storage has received positive feedback since its release, and we understand home users will want more storage for backing up their data and photos, which is why we have introduced the BeeStation Plus with 8TB of storage, it is double the storage of the original BeeStation and we have added Plex media server to allow customers to better manage their media library.
Soon, BeeStation Plus can serve as an NVR (network video recorder) with support for Synology cameras, which adds even more value to our customers who prefer a home network storage solution without having a complex setup process.
Q: That’s an impressive update you have for your consumer product lineup. BeeStation is certainly a great home storage that I also loved having at my home too, but just wondering, since it is only a single storage device with no data redundancy features like a multi-bay NAS, what has Synology done to address this?
Jason: We understand that BeeStation stores our customer’s important files and memories, but we also don’t want to create a dual-drive BeeStation that increases the cost of ownership and complexity, which is why we have introduced BeeProtect, an affordable cloud backup solution that’s built on our trusted Synology C2 platform to protect files on your BeeStation, so when the need arises, your files will remain safe and intact on BeeProtect and can be restored to any new BeeStation.
However, in addition to BeeProtect, BeeStation also supports several backup options to different locations: external drive, Synology NAS and Synology C2 Storage. You can find the detailed methods and step-by-step instructions here.
Q: Speaking of your DiskStation NAS, there has been a backlash from various tech reviewers and the community that the DS25-series can only work exclusively with Synology branded hard drives, why the decision to do so and how do you address this to customers deciding to upgrade to your latest DiskStation lineup.
Jason: We totally understand the frustration from our customers and the main reason we are doing this is to ensure the best performance and reliability they can get out of our DiskStation products, Synology branded hard drives have been tested rigorously to offer superior data transfer performance and endurance on DiskStation compared to third-party hard drives, customers who have switched to Synology hard drives have also experienced lesser drive failures with over 40% reduction in support requests.
Of course, we understand that our customers may still prefer other branded NAS hard drives, and we are continuously working with hard drive manufacturers to certify their drives to be used on DiskStation. If you are upgrading from an older DiskStation to our latest DS25-series, your current hard drive will still work without the need to swap to a Synology branded drive.
Q: Aside from this, customers are reporting limited availability of Synology hard drives and higher prices, what is your view on this?
Jason: Our partners and retailers carry Synology hard drives when they sell our DiskStation products, which customers shouldn’t have an issue when it comes to availability, and when it comes to pricing, I don’t deny that there are better priced NAS-grade hard drives out there, but I am confident that our customers will find our Synology branded drives to have better performance, while we are always ready to support them if they encounter any issues with our products.
Q: Overall, what is the outlook that Synology has for the Malaysia market?
Jason: We continue to see many exciting opportunities in Malaysia for both consumer and enterprise markets, offering the best data protection solution to our customers continues to be our top priority, there has never been a better time than now to help a business manage their data better with our latest 25-series products, our latest PAS7700 active-active NVMe all-flash storage solution will help larger enterprises achieve their business goals in mission critical applications, and finally, we will continue to bring more value added services to consumers for our Bee storage product lineup, so stay tuned for that.
Warren
The geeky dictator of KLGG.