Someone at Synology had a stroke of genius as far as the upcoming DiskStation DS213air is concerned, as it’s the first consumer level NAS/router with Wi-Fi that we’re aware of. It looks like your average DiskStation product from Synology, but for some it’ll remove the hassle of having multiple devices spread out around the home.

Admittedly the DS213air isn’t going to be the ideal solution for everyone, as this two drive NAS only has a single Ethernet port for one, so if you’re using an ADSL or Cable modem connector, you’d still be stuck with your modem. There’s also no built in switch, so all devices that would connect to the DS213air would have to be wireless.

On the other hand, the integration of two drives with support for RAID 1 for added data security, two USB 3.0 ports that allows for easy transfer of files to and from various storage devices and Synology’s excellent DSM 4.0 software should make this a sure-fire hit with those that are looking at consolidating a few of their boxes around the home. The DS213air could of course also be used as a Wi-Fi extender and if you’re wondering where the antennas are, well, they’re built into the chassis.

The DS213air is also ideal in situations where there’s no PC or Mac involved, as it can be configured from a smartphone or a tablet. There might not be a lot of situations when this is needed, but we’re sure there are a few people out there that own a console and a tablet for example and the DS213air could potentially work in an environment like that.

On the hardware side the DS213air sports one of Freescale’s QorIQ SoC’s, just as its bigger brother the DiskStation DS413 which was announced at Computex as well. The QorIQ SoC offers hardware encryption of the data and it’s extremely power efficient, as it allows the entire system to hibernate when not in use and considering the DS413 draw around 3W when hibernating, the DS213air should use even less power.

Kitguru says: We’re expecting to see more products like this in the future, as it doesn’t really make sense for home users to have a router and a NAS, since these two products can so easily be integrated into one.

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