The DS210j comes with: A quick setup guide and software CD, an Ethernet cable, power adaptor and transformer, and screws to secure the HDD’s inside the NAS.

Here we have the DS210j, the exterior is mostly white plastic, with the gray accented bit at the front. Normally I’m, not so hot on white things, but having compared this to my all black Netgear NAS, the Synology DS210j doesn’t seem to draw your eyes to it as much when it’s sat on a desk or shelf.

The front of the NAS has nice big lights for; Status, LAN activity, Disk 1 and Disk 2 activity, USB copy and power. I like the size of these as it means they don’t have to be quite as bright, yet are still easy to see at a glance what the NAS is doing.

The black connector in the middle is a USB port for backing up to/from an external USB drive. The other gray covered slot above the power button isn’t used on the DS210j, but I presume it is used in another model that shares the same case (the DS209 perhaps).

The side of the DS210j is pretty plain, with just a Synology logo and the rubber feet showing. The feet are pretty thick rubber, so should do well at stopping hard drive vibrations passing though to the desk.

Round the back of the DS210j, we have; the 70m  cooling fan (which hopefully won’t be too loud), two more USB ports, the gigabit LAN port, a Kensington lock mount, and the power adaptor.

On the bottom of the drive we can see the only intake for the fan is a grill towards the front of the NAS. This should ensure cool air gets drawn across the whole of the NAS unit keeping the drives nice and cool.

Next Page – Installation