What's in the box?:
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The DiskStation DS418j comes in a small, brown box. Along with a picture of the unit, the sticker on the front advertises many of its key features including its 64-bit dual-core processor, 1GB of DDR4 memory, quiet and energy efficient operation and brightness-adjustable LED indicators. The sticker on the back of the box provide a bit more information regarding the DS418j's physical features as well as the package contents.
Inside the box you'll find the DS418j as well as an AC power cord and adapter, ethernet cable, quick installation guide and three bags of screws.
Physical Features:
The look of the DS418j is very similar to Synology's previous entry-level 4-bay NAS, the DS416j. Designed to fit in the home environment, the device is constructed out of black plastic and painted metal and measures 184 x 168 x 230 mm. The DS418j also tips the scales at 2.21 kg without any hard drives installed.
Instead of an LCD panel, the DS418j uses a series of LED indicators to show the current state of the system, network and the installed hard drives. The brightness of these LEDs can be adjusted, or turned off altogether through the control panel within DiskStation Manager (DSM).
The rear of the DS418j is pretty straight forward. To keep the hard drives cool, the NAS is equipped with a pair of 80mm fans. While these fans don't appear to be temperature controlled, you can control their speed from within DiskStation Manager. Below the fans, you can see the DS418j's power connector, a gigabit ethernet port and a pair of USB 3.0 ports. These USB ports can be used to connect external storage devices, printers and other devices to the NAS.
One downside of the DS418j's design is that it does not have any external drive bays. To get at the hard drives, you have to take out the four thumb screws, flip down the back panel and then remove the cover. From there, you'll have access to DS418j's drive trays.
With the drive trays out of the way, you can see the motherboard and SATA backplane. To keep the Realtek RTD1293 processor and memory cool, Synology has used a large metal plate and passive heatsink. And yes, the heatsink is a little crooked. At first I thought that this was a mistake at the factory but it appears to be designed this way.
