KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Those of you who have been following our recent NAS reviews will have noticed that Synology recently released the latest version of their operating system which is fully multitasking, allowing the user to switch between applications and tasks. We have looked at this before but we were quite surprised to see the USB Station 2 also incorporated this cutting edge software package. Surely it would run much slower however?
As with all Synology devices, the NAS systems are accessed from the Synology Assistant – which is included on the disc supplied, or available from download from the Synology website.
We were pleasantly surprised to see that the newest Diskstation Manager 3.0 software was already installed on the USB Station 2, so we did not need to manually update the firmware via the file on our desktop. As with all their products – ‘admin‘ without a password is the default login.
To keep the user informed of the basic procedures, the software immediately introduces itself with a 4 list menu of initial options to get you up and running. The system is basically fool proof and painless to use.
Although we expected compromises with this specific low cost product we didn't experience any. The operating system is just as fast as the previous high end Synology products we used and it is fully multitasking.
Amazingly, the system still offers support for jumbo frames with a plethora of settings, identical to the high end products.
Accessing the product from either Windows or OSX is as simple as it gets. There is also the option to use the device as a media unit which will please a wide audience.
Our USB drive was immediately detected and a list of formatting options are offered. There are no RAID options as we mentioned earlier, but they do offer FAT for cross platform compatibility.
Setting up shared folders is a one step process and should prove easy enough, even for inexperienced users who have never had a NAS system before.
The software is very user friendly and all options are tagged within subcategories. We also liked the audio streaming options which will prove useful for many users. It can act as a 24/7 download center without a PC as well and supports iTunes as a server, meaning you can share music and video with other users over the network. Furthermore, DS audio smartphone application allows users to stream a terabyte of music stored on USB Station 2 to iPhone, iPod touch or Android phone whenever Internet access is available.
This is a really nifty little gadget, would sit beside a monitor without even being seen.
Excellent little product. fast enough but tiny with no noise and 4w of power. bit slow for what id need, but great for printer sharing and office setups for document sharing etc.
over 20meg a second is really good,. I was expecting it to be limited to 100mbit. not over 200. nice.
i need to get this, just for the software alone. fast enough for what I need, which is to hook in a 2tb drive and stream HD videos to tv.
Well this is something that appeals to me. I dont need a nas, but ive 4 or 5 HDs laying in a drawer. this is a low cost way to use them.
I am REALLY impressed with this little device. that V3 software suite looks great. really think this will sell well. most people dont want to fork out 350 quid for a NAS. good way to use those old drives
Love these guys, I bought the 710+ after reading the review here. This is ideal for a small office and printer sharing and a pool system of storage.
We use the 1010+’s in work. 5 of them. This would be a good addition for printing sharing in the offices.
Shame that you have to wipe out whatever is on your disk in the first place. So factor in the cost a disk to add to this. Why cant it have three USB ports? 2 for disks and one for printer. And where is the advertised wireless capability. Simple data grams dont indicate whether it really would be capable of playing back hi bitrate mkv files as some have very high spikes up to 60-80Mbps. A lower price, NTFS support also, with pre-existing files kept intact. fat32 only allows 4gb max file size.