Removing the DS920+ from its packaging, we are met by a rather sleek looking NAS unit. Both sides utilise a stencil cut-out of the Synology logo which also doubles up to offer some minor ventilation for the internal components and storage drives.

At the front we have a series of four vertical HDD trays, each with a locking mechanism for security – the provided key will unlock to allow access. As is customary for Synology units, the right-edge bears a number of LED indicators for: STATUS, DISK 1, 2, 3, 4. Synology also include a single USB 3.0 port for quick storage access and there is a power button.


Around the back there are two integrated fan grills for the 90mm exhaust fans – this flushes unwanted heat away from the NAS and out through the back.

Below this we have a factory reset button, a single USB 3.0 port, as well as an eSATA port, two Gigabit LAN ports, Kensington lock allocation and the AC power port to work in conjunction with the supplied power pack.

Both Gigabit ethernet connections do take advantage of Link Aggregation which is especially useful for networking performance enhancement but we are somewhat disappointed at the lack of ethernet beyond 1GB. Many network devices (including motherboards produced in 2020 support 2.5Gbe – on a plus model we do expect to see 2.5, 5 or 10 GBe.


To maximise performance, quite a few of Synology’s NAS models support SSD cache and the DS920+ is one of them. On the underside there are two spots for installing two M.2 SSDs which will manage the read/write cache for this unit – greatly improving performance for certain tasks which involve random access. The capacity of the SSDs isn’t of primary concern, smaller capacity such as 128-250GB are more than ample.


The HDD trays can host 2.5” and 3.5” drives and DS920+ can accommodate up to 64TB of storage. Installing storage into the NAS is simple, the drive just drops into the provided tray in a tool-free manner with the SATA connection ports facing the rear.

Once the drive is secure, the tray can be slid back into the chassis to have the SATA connectors marry up with the ports inside the NAS.

We would usually take a look at the internal design and components within the NAS but since there is no clear way of getting inside the unit we must refer to the technical specifications instead. These are as follows:

• CPU Frequency: Quad-Core 2.0 GHz (Turbo 2.7 GHz)
• Hardware Encrypted Engine + Floating Point
• Memory: 4GB DDR4
• Internal HDD/SSD: 3.5" or 2.5" SATA-III 4x
• Max Internal Capacity: 64TB (4x 16TB HDD)

The most obvious comparison for the DS920+ is the model which it replaces – the DS918+. Many have been patiently waiting for the release of the DS920+ and in terms of the hardware configuration, this new unit offers quite a bump up in performance. The CPU frequency is up from 1.5GHz to 2.0GHz and the memory standard moves from DDR3 to DDR4 – providing faster frequency and bandwidth, which will come in handy for networking tasks.