The Best NAS Devices for Your Home After Months of Testing

Whether you want to backmost up each your precious files, marque it easier to stock and collaborate, oregon make your ain amusement cloud, network-attached retention (NAS) devices are the way. These versatile servers tin boost your location web and assistance you offload tasks from your machine and different devices.

I’ve spent the past fewer months investigating NAS devices from immoderate of the apical brands with a absorption connected families looking to make backups and possibly rotation up an amusement server to chopped backmost connected streaming subscriptions. These are the NAS devices I recommend.

You mightiness privation to cheque retired our related guides too, similar How to Set Up an NAS Server, How to Back Up Your Digital Life, and The Best External Hard Drives.

The NAS Servers I Recommend Most

While nary longer undisputed, Synology is inactive the heavyweight champion of the NAS market, and this two-bay NAS is perfect for the mean home. It is highly fast, either topping the charts oregon coming adjacent successful my tests, and consistently hitting astir 300 MB/s work and 250 MB/s write, though that drops to a small implicit 100 MB/s if your web is constricted to 1 Gbps anyplace (router, port, cable, oregon switch). It has a generous array of ports (2.5-Gbps and 1-Gbps Ethernet ports and USB ports beforehand and back). The fantabulous hardware includes a speedy Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core processor, 2 GB of RAM that tin beryllium upgraded to 6 GB, and abstraction for 2 drives (up to 40 TB). It is compact and comparatively quiet, with immoderate insignificant instrumentality sound erstwhile it’s busy. The screwless clip-on tray plan makes it speedy to insert drives.

Setup and configuration are elemental and accessible. Synology’s software, done its web interface and mobile apps, is the astir polished and user-friendly I’ve tested, and Synology offers the largest enactment of apps (both its ain polished offerings and third-party apps similar Plex and Jellyfin). This NAS offers tons of flexibility for backups, works large arsenic a media server, and offers a batch of extras, including VPN server and information camera support.

On the downside, Synology’s devices are comparatively expensive. Remember that, arsenic connected astir NAS devices, you indispensable supply your ain drives. Synology besides concisely locked down its NAS lineup to Synology drives, deeming third-party drives incompatible. While it has rolled this backmost aft immoderate protest, truthful you tin usage third-party drives now, it’s a spot of a reddish flag. There’s besides nary HDMI larboard here, which you mightiness privation for connecting a TV. If you deliberation you request much space, the Synology DiskStation DS425+ ($520) adds an other 2 bays.

For folks seeking a elemental web backup that doesn’t necessitate overmuch thought oregon configuration, I besides tested the all-in-one Synology BeeStation Plus, which comes with retention included (prices are presently inflated owed to the AI-driven shortage), but nary apps oregon further features. It’s speedy and casual to acceptable up, works good for automatic backups, and has a decent photograph app that tin admit faces, but the show is middling.

The regular Synology BeeStation ($365) is simply a spot much affordable, but lone has fractional the abstraction astatine 4 TB. For a straightforward backup solution, the BeeStation is arsenic casual arsenic it gets, but you tin get much for your money.

Synology offers a precise wide scope of NAS devices, including almighty systems for large businesses. It besides makes bully routers that tin beryllium paired to signifier a mesh and information cameras that I person not yet tested.