Over the past few years we've reviewed a handful of NAS (Network Attached Storage) products and while most of them have been very impressive, they all shared one common pitfall: they were extremely pricey. So expensive in fact, that they're little more than a pipe dream for the average user.

For example, about two years ago we reviewed the powerful Synology Disk Station DS-409+ which cost a cool $600 without any hard drives installed. Later on, the QNAP TS-809 Pro surfaced on our radar with a starting price of $1,700, which is considerably more than most spend on their primary PC.

More recently we checked out the Synology Disk Station DS410j, which is a value oriented 4-bay NAS device, but it was still $370 and we estimated at the time that adding four 1TB hard drives could balloon the total cost to $700.

The alternative to buying an expensive NAS device is to build a budget PC or acquire one second hand to use as a network file server. While this can be a cheaper and often more powerful route, it's not without its drawbacks such as higher power consumption, less out of the box functionality and the need for a monitor to make changes.

Assuming you are determined to get your hands on a NAS device, there are a number of cheaper options to choose from, but it can be difficult to pick the right one. In my travels, I've come across several cheap alternatives and to be honest, they've all been a bit rubbishy. So when LG told us they had a 2-bay model that costs less than $250 with a pair of 1TB hard drives included, we sat up and took notice.

However, as we have repeatedly discovered when dealing with NAS products, there is much more to consider than just storage capacity and price. These devices are highly dependent on the hardware and software that drives them and either can cause the product to be a complete failure. Realizing that, we're extremely eager to find out what makes the LG N2A2 tick, let's take a closer look...