Synology USB Station 2 review

We’re big fans of Synology’s Disk Station NAS enclosures, and the USB Station 2 is the new baby of the range. The original USB Station never made it to the UK, so this is the first time we’ve seen what is essentially a Disk Station, but without the disk enclosure.

Instead, you can connect up to two 2TB USB disks, and two USB printers. There are two USB2 ports on the rear, but you can attach a USB hub to increase the number of ports to connect the four devices. You’ll also find a Gigabit Ethernet port, a power socket and, on the side, a button to safely disconnect USB disks.

We appreciated the quick and easy setup process: unlike Disk Stations, you don’t have to download and install the latest firmware on the USB Station 2: it comes pre-loaded with Disk Station Manager 3. Plus, you won’t have to format your disks in order to use them and share their contents over your network. File system support includes NTFS, FAT32, EXT3 and EXT4.

Disk Station Manager 3 is like a multi-tasking operating system, but it runs in a browser. We had no problems using it with Chrome and Internet Explorer, but there’s also support for Firefox and Safari. It’s by far the prettiest NAS interface around, and makes it simple to configure user accounts and use the USB Station’s other features.
Although some applications are missing compared to a Disk Station, you still get an FTP server, Download Station (for downloading files directly from the internet), Audio Station (including internet radio support), an iTunes Server, DLNA/UPnP server and a print server. You can share a maximum of two printers simultaneously, and we had no trouble sharing our Samsung laser printer.