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KitGuru has reviewed many Synology products recently and our findings have shown that they have been incredibly successful targeting both the business and home enthusiast markets with high performance solutions. As many people are immediately discouraged by typical NAS pricing however today we are going to look at one of their latest ‘stripped down' products for the mass market.
The Synology USB Station 2 has been built as the foundation of a central hub system, offering connectivity to USB hard drives and printers while also delivering media options. The fact it is silent, has a tiny physical footprint and low power drain will appeal to many users.
Instead of offering integrated hard drives, the USB Station 2 has two USB ports which can accept two external hard drives, up to 2TB in capacity each, for a total of 4TB storage. The unit ships with a Gigabit Lan port bringing high performance streaming capabilities to your network.
- Max HDD Capacity: 4TB (2X 2TB external USB hard drives)1
- Size (HxWxD): 46mm X 122mm X 111mm
- External HDD Interface: USB 2.0 port X2
- Weight: 147g
- LAN: Gigabit X1
- Wireless Support
The USB Station 2 ships in an attractive, subtle box with basic information detailing the multitude of uses.
Inside there is a software CD with literature, a Cat 6 cable and a power adapter. The power adapter we have is a European model but if you are in the UK then the correct adapter will be included. As a UK review site we can sometimes get early release products from various parts of the world.
The USB Station 2 is a tiny little product which has an appealing, inoffensive design. Obviously as there are no drives installed, the physical footprint can be much less than normal. They also claim a 5W power drain, but we will look at that later to confirm.
The product is very light, but it also manages to feel quite substantial, rather than flimsy.
There is no RAID support as it is a stripped down product for a low cost marketplace. Inside is an 800W processor with 128MB of DDR400mhz memory – this combination proved to be quite fast in our testing, with the CPU never loading over 60 percent even when multitasking. Very impressive, considering. On the side as we can see from the picture above, you can disconnect USB drives by pressing the button. This works in the same principle as Microsoft Windows ‘safe device removal'.
The rear has a power connector, reset button (which we never needed), a gigabit RJ45 port as the two USB 2.0 ports.
As the USB Station 2 offers connectivity via the dual USB 2.0 ports, you can hook up any drive you wish, even a portable 2.5 inch SSD with enclosure, as seen above. The port delivered enough power for the SSD to operate.
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.
We are testing the Synology USB Station 2 within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance.
Reference Test PC:
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 @ 4ghz
Storage: Kingston 128GB SSD V+ Series
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Gene
Graphics: Geforce GTX285 2GB
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600mhz @2000mhz
Network: 2x Belkin 16 Port Gigabit Switches
Operating System: Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate
Firstly we perform a native network test to ascertain pure data throughput. Jumbo Frames have been set to 9k.
Raw data throughput is not bad considering the drive is attached via a USB 2.0 interface. Next we will try some real world testing with data transfers across the network, to and from the Synology USB Station 2.
12 megabytes per second write speed isn't too bad considering the budget market place.
Above is a screenshot of a copying process. The system holds steady between 10 and 13MB/s with 40percent of the memory utilised and the CPU time hovering around 40 percent.
Reading from the unit generates an average of around 22.4 MB/s which is solid and easily capable of streaming a 1080p MKV file.
Reading from the unit we manage to maintain between 19MB/s and 24 MB/s depending on the file location and overhead. The processor hits around 60 percent to handle this transfer speed.
Next we created a folder of files, 500mb/s in size with a variety of data , from small database documents to larger jpgs and bmps. We expect to pay a slight penalty as we are using Jumbo frames set to 9k, however performance should still be good.
Mixed file performance doesn't cause much of a hit for the USB Station 2 with only minor drops in performance levels.
We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
Noise was measured from half a meter away.
The USB Station 2 is fanless and our meter could not read any noise above ambient levels.
Next, we want to measure power drain from the socket.
Yes, a total of 4 watts when data is being transferred, even when we had a 2.5 inch drive plugged into the back of the unit.
The Synology USB Station 2 is not in the market as a high performance NAS server, if you want cutting edge performance then check out some of the other reviews on Kitguru for units such as the DS210+, DS710+ or DS1010+. This is a low cost product for home or small office environments with a tiny physical footprint and power drain. As such it is hard to find fault, especially as it is capable of streaming 1080p MKV content without a problem. Not only that, but the USB printer sharing capability will surely prove useful in a home or small office environment. We tested this and it worked perfectly fine with our Epson and Canon printers.
The USB Station 2 is silent, and requires only 4 watts of power to operate. If you aren't demanding the highest data transfer speeds but are in the market for a capable, low cost NAS solution with media and printer sharing capabilities then this should surely be top of your shortlist.
Availability should be pretty good now, and we found the best price via Dabs.com for £79.99 – just plug and play some storage and you are ready to rock.
KitGuru says: Yet another winner for Synology.
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.