07-18-2025, 04:13 PM
Thanks for your message and for the kind words about the channel. Really appreciate you taking the time to explain your use case, it makes it much easier to give you a clear recommendation.
Given what you use your NAS for — light photo and media backup from your phone, DLNA streaming, and cloud backups — you are right that you don’t need anything more than a simple 1-bay unit. Between the Synology DS124 and the QNAP TS-133, both will handle your needs comfortably, but there are a couple of differences worth noting.
The DS124 runs Synology DSM, which is more polished and user-friendly overall. For photo backup in particular, Synology Photos is still a better and more intuitive experience than what QNAP currently offers. It is also slightly faster in real-world use thanks to its newer CPU, even though both are ARM-based.
The TS-133 does have a quad-core CPU compared to the DS124’s dual-core, but for your light workload this doesn’t translate into a meaningful performance advantage. QNAP’s QTS software is also a bit more technical and not as beginner-friendly as DSM, and since you’re already familiar with Synology it would feel more natural sticking with their platform.
On price, the DS124 and Beestation are close as you noticed, but Beestation is much more limited and not really a full NAS OS in the same way DSM is. For the same money you’re getting a much more capable and future-proof device with the DS124.
So my advice would be to go with the DS124. It’s a big upgrade over the DS115j you’ve been using and will give you faster, more responsive performance while keeping the simple Synology experience you’re used to.
Given what you use your NAS for — light photo and media backup from your phone, DLNA streaming, and cloud backups — you are right that you don’t need anything more than a simple 1-bay unit. Between the Synology DS124 and the QNAP TS-133, both will handle your needs comfortably, but there are a couple of differences worth noting.
The DS124 runs Synology DSM, which is more polished and user-friendly overall. For photo backup in particular, Synology Photos is still a better and more intuitive experience than what QNAP currently offers. It is also slightly faster in real-world use thanks to its newer CPU, even though both are ARM-based.
The TS-133 does have a quad-core CPU compared to the DS124’s dual-core, but for your light workload this doesn’t translate into a meaningful performance advantage. QNAP’s QTS software is also a bit more technical and not as beginner-friendly as DSM, and since you’re already familiar with Synology it would feel more natural sticking with their platform.
On price, the DS124 and Beestation are close as you noticed, but Beestation is much more limited and not really a full NAS OS in the same way DSM is. For the same money you’re getting a much more capable and future-proof device with the DS124.
So my advice would be to go with the DS124. It’s a big upgrade over the DS115j you’ve been using and will give you faster, more responsive performance while keeping the simple Synology experience you’re used to.