Labs

The casing may look a little drab next to the slick offerings from Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega, but under the uninspired exterior of the Synology Disk Station 106e beats the heart of a very capable and flexible Nas device.

The packaging for the Freecom model makes a big deal about being a '10-in-1' device. The Disk Station 106e's box makes no such claim, which is a shame and a missed opportunity, as although it doesn't offer wireless or router functions, it does pretty much everything else Freecom's Nas drive does, and some more besides.

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the list for Mac users is proper support for Apple Filing Protocol connections. It matched the Adaptec Snap Server 110 (which costs nearly twice as much) in our file system test, only tripping up, like the Snap Server, when it came to changing file permissions. All this means is that you can't change the permissions remotely using the Finder or chmod command, but must do it directly - no great hardship for users at this level, though.

The other features are just as impressive. An option to turn on web, FTP, photo and even PHP and MySQL serving means it's very simple to extend the 106e's capabilities. In conjunction with port forwarding on your router and, optionally, some dynamic DNS mapping if you don't have a static IP address, you can easily serve websites from home and access all the data on your Nas drive over FTP. You get full users and groups functionality, printer server, sharing of connected USB and one eSATA disk, and upgradable firmware (even the original Disk Station 101 now shares most of the 106e's features).

Mac friendly, flexible and with a good measure of future-proofing - the Synology Disk Station 106e is a clear winner.