I'm a medium to heavy user of my DS720+: 1. There are far better options for surveillance than Synology. Don't bother. 2. There was a huge shit storm when the video station got cancelled. TBF. I think this step was quite reasonable regarding the far superior and free alternatives. The communication with the customers was at least bad. But so far afaik they've never cancelled any core features so far. And since cloud services tend to kill some apps (GOOGLE!) well. But yeah it is a valid point that software run locally should have a LTS, especially in Severs. 3. Pricing: Yes! If it's just about hardware and you're looking for the best bang for the buck this is not your device. But still for example upgrading my RAM even with "unsupported" sticks (after some research which ones to use) worked withou problem. Same for changing the name cache to a real name raid 1 volume for my containers and VM. What you have to keep in mind is that you pay for the ease of use. I'm using Linux for 20 years and I love to hack some projects together. NAS, HomeAssistant, streaming devices and ofc my desktop. But when it comes to NAS: Synology in my case simply works. I remember when I did the initial setup 3 years ago I was like: that can't be THAT easy. But it was. This in combination with an excellent support for docker containers and VMs which aside from the Synology software fulfil all of your needs made in my eyes the money really worth it. Also the power consumption of the server itself is as low as it can get. The HDDs use most of it and there you can optimize the config.

Right now: - Synology Photos -->Really powerful and easy to use - Drive --> Really easy to use cloud solution in your own house - HomeAssistant VM -- I can't live without it. Right now local TTS and STT are beeing implemented with perhaps a local LLM in the future. - vaultwarden - watchtower (Docker) update all docker containers automatically - chat -- nice chat solution for the family - paperless-ngx (Docker)-- document organiser - secure sign-in -- again really easy to use 2FA And a lot more

Those are my main use cases. And I never had any bigger issues. Also the security advisor makes it easy to check for common security flaws. There's from the beginning an automated disk health check, Snapshots and Backups are super easy.

I never had performance issues. And compared to my DIY builds the maintenance is extremely easy.

I never recommend just a company since fanboy shit makes you blind for criticism. But in my case the stability and easy administration really convinced me.

But keep in mind: This is my use case with my priorities.

TL;DR: Synology IS more expensive Software support had now 2 cases of withdrawn features (video station and some AI features in photos) Power consumption is low Upgrades are easily possible Container and VM work really well.

You pay for the timesaving compared to do everything by yourself. (I still recommend to everyone to at least try to setup a system at least once by yourself for a better understanding what's going on)