At first glance the Disk Station DS209 from Synology looks like a fairly run-of-the-mill small NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliance. But that's far from the case, the compact DS209 delivering a high level of performance plus a whole raft of unexpected features beyond simple file sharing.

Designed to take either one or two drives, the DS209 is housed in a smart white plastic casing with an external AC adapter. Disks aren't included, but most 3.5-inch SATA drives can be used (there's a compatibility list on the Synology website) leaving you to choose your own capacity (up to 2TB per disk) and spin speed. You can even go for 2.5-inch drives using special carriers, available separately.

Fitting the disks can be a bit fiddly because of the lack of space inside the device. You'll also need a screwdriver, but the necessary screws and cables are provided, with the cables just the right length so that it all fits together quite neatly.

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The on/off button is at the front, along with the status LEDs, with a Gigabit Ethernet port round at the back for LAN attachment. Alongside are two USB connectors to either expand the available storage or take backups. They can also be used to manage a UPS and share printers, plus there's a third USB port at the front. This, however, has just one specialised purpose: plug in a memory stick, press the copy button below it and the contents are automatically copied to a pre-set folder on the hard disk and shared on the LAN.

Once the disks are installed, the next step is to run the supplied setup program to locate the DS209, prepare the disks and install the Linux-based Disk Station Manager software. This takes about ten minutes, after which the DS209 is configured and managed via an intuitive web-based AJAX interface.

The Web GUI makes light work of most tasks, including setup of the logical volumes. For our tests we fitted a pair of 250GB disks and configured them as a mirrored pair (RAID 1) but there's support for simple striping across the two disks (RAID 0), if preferred, and JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) where each disk can be formatted as a separate volume. Note also that you can start with a single drive and add a second later. Capacity can also be extended using external drives, but there's no hot-swapping.

What you end up with is a solid and capable NAS appliance. SMB/CIFS file sharing comes as standard, along with NFS so that Linux users can also get in on the act. An FTP server is, similarly, built in, along with an application called File Station which allows shared files to be accessed via a browser.

File Station is just one of a number of optional applications that can be run on the DS209. Another (Photo Station) can be used to share still images and videos while another (Audio Station) lets you play and stream music over the LAN. Yet another application (Surveillance Station) adds facilities to monitor and record from network cameras, with an iTunes server being yet another built-in option, along with an integrated Apache web server complete with PHP support and MySQL database management.

The DS209 isn't the cheapest NAS appliance on the block, especially when you factor in the cost of disks. But it's hard to beat in terms of functionality or ease of use. Performance was pretty impressive in our tests, too, with file read/write speeds close to what you would expect from an internal disk but over the network. Plus there's an even faster model, the DS209+II (£315 + VAT) with an upgraded processor, more memory and support for eSATA disks.

You have to pay a premium for the Synology Disk Station DS209 and extra for disks to go in it, but it's still good value for money. It's easy to configure, fast, reliable and flexible, plus it can do a lot more than just share files. A veritable server in a shoebox.