I've now replaced my old DS415+ with a brand new DS718+ and I thought I should share some first impressions:
1) It's fast! I was a bit worried at first because of the lower CPU frequency but it's faster, that's for sure. Filetransfers on my DS415+ was usually around >90megabytes/second (copying a file from Windows) and now I'm >100megabytes/s. I was fine with 90megabyte/s but still it's nice. :)
2) Three USB3-ports is very nice, big brother DS918+ only has two for some reason.
3) Hardware transcoding with Plex (running on DSM6.2beta) and h.264 material works very good in my tests (1080p-24fps). NAS CPU-usage is only about 20% when playing movies instead of 100%. x265 encoded material works bad with the hardware transcoder but will hopefully improve in the future.
4) Hardware transcoding with Videostation must be broken. Output quality is really bad. Looks like a very low bitrate video.
5) "Virtual Machine Manager" the upgraded DSM app now allows other OS'es than DSM, for example "Windows". I have created a virtual environment based on Windows10x64 and it works ok. Haven't tried it that much but still feels a little bit faster than on my old DS415+. VMM requires 4GB of RAM so if you have got a stock DS718+ you must upgrade RAM. I wise move with VMM is probably installing the virtual machines on an SSD on your NAS to speed things up.
6) Synology says this unit can only have 6GB of RAM (2+4GB). But many people have reported it works fine with 16GB(!). The stock memory module it comes with can be replaced (I haven't tried it, it looks a little tricky but people say it can be done without tools). I have however purchased an 8GB module and put in the empty socket which is far easier to reach and it works fine!
So overall, I'm very happy with it. I could have used a few more trays but only two USB-ports on the DS918+ annoyed me.
