For me it's one of the few options available because my ISP forces me to use a transitional IPv6 technology called "MAP-E," which the UniFi products don't support. I switched ISPs after purchasing my equipment and ended up with $700 of dead weight.
I can at least verify a portion of the second claim of this reviewer's post. A section of the EULA does dictate that Synology grants itself the right to conduct an audit to protect their intellectual property.
"Section 7. Audit.Synology will have the right to audit your compliance with the terms of this EULA. You agree to grant Synology a right to access to your facilities, equipment, books, records and documents and to otherwise reasonably cooperate with Synology in order to facilitate any such audit by Synology or its agent authorized by Synology."
I can't verify the claims about "Peoples' Republic of China PRC" being allowed to enter a non-Chinese citizen's home (US citizen) to protect IP. Might be applicable to Taiwan or Chinese citizens.
I am not a lawyer so I cant determine whether this EULA is enforceable in the US or EU. Regardless of enforceability, I would be hesitant to buy Synology products as well. Who knows what backdoors they have implemented in order to satisfy the Chinese government.
Given synology is owned and operated out of Taiwan, it’s rather silly to make claims about the prc.
As far as I know that clause was created years ago when people were using key generators to make keys for surveillance station licenses. I don’t know of anyone who has ever actually been audited.
Fwiw, i have 2 synology routers, and did not have to create a cloud account or use the cloud to setup. Its there, and an option, and you can get other plugins if u have the cloud account, but by no means is it required for setup or use.
Thank you for that link, I had not realized Synology had moved into the router space, and I've been running Synology NASes for almost a decade! Generally I've been happy with them, and on the few occasions I need tech support, it was surprisingly good (going on with zero expectations based on other companies' support in the past).
I recently went with two 2200acs. Been mostly pleased, but there were some settings i had to play with to get the right router to use some of the more distant devices.. without custom settings it trys to load balance devices over choosing based on signal strength, thus a far device from the main router had an unusable connection..