Best NAS devices in 2023

Looking to handle your own backups and media streaming? These are the very best NAS for home, work, and play

A network-attached storage (NAS) device is essentially a mini server with a focus on storing data. These powerful little enclosures are excellent for the home or in a bustling office, providing a centralized location for data and/or backups to be stored, as well as a platform for services such as Plex Media Server to be managed from. This guide will run you through the very best NAS servers available from top brands including ASUSTOR, QNAP, Synology, and TerraMaster.

It may be showing its age but this is still an excellent NAS.

The DiskStation DS220+ is the perfect package for anyone looking to get their first NAS. It balances its performance and value proposition pretty well — a crucial factor for something catering to home users. Its two bays let you add up to 32TB of total storage, which is ample for personal use even after accounting for redundancy. The best part is that the DS220+ uses an Intel Celeron processor paired with 2GB of RAM, making it more than capable of 4K streaming through Plex and similarly demanding use cases.

The Synology DiskStation DS220+ is approximately three years old now and, still, we recommend you buy the NAS in 2023. This is a testament to how good this enclosure is from Synology. It's a two-bay enclosure, meaning you will be able to install up to two 3.5-inch drives inside the chassis. This is the minimum number of bays we'd recommend buying a NAS with, as its vital data protection measures such as RAID are used to shield you against data loss. Even when compared to newer NAS, the DS220+ manages to hold its own, and it remains one of the best Synology NAS.

The Intel Celeron J4025 processor is a decent dual-core chip with a burst speed of up to 2.9GHz. Considering most NAS owners rely on their enclosures for storing data securely and running a few apps, this is more than good enough. An added bonus of this processor is the inclusion of integrated graphics for transcoding, which comes in handy with Plex Media Server and streaming. It's a shame there aren't any M.2 slots and the networking stack is limited to 1GbE, but it's affordable and runs the company's excellent DSM operating system.

For those who are looking for the best bang for their buck.

TerraMaster's F4-423 is an Intel-powered NAS with four drive bays, M.2 SSD support, and 2.5Gb networking. For the price, it's a very capable server foundation that can be used for various deployments.

TerraMaster is known for producing some of the best-value NAS in the industry. You'll frequently find its enclosures undercutting the competition, especially Synology. The TerraMaster F4-423 is a powerful server with some impressive specifications for the price. Let's start with the Intel Celeron N5095 processor, which is found inside a more expensive NAS like the QNAP TS-464. It's a quad-core chip capable of boosting up to 2.9GHz. This is joined by 4GB of DDR4 RAM, which can be expanded up to a whopping 32GB.

The four bays are great for installing some high-capacity 3.5-inch drives, and two M.2 SSD slots are at hand for caching or expanding the storage pool further. Two 2.5GbE ports are available, as well as a dedicated HDMI port. This is some considerable firepower for the price, but it's not all good news for TerraMaster's F4-423. The TerraMaster Operating System (TOS) isn't quite as refined as the competition, but the company has made some serious strides in recent years, and we expect it to continue updating the OS to bring it up to standard.

The best NAS for creating your very own Netflix.

The QNAP TS-464 is a brilliant and powerful NAS, rocking an Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM out of the box, and even two M.2 slots and a single PCIe expansion slot. It has everything you need to run a Plex Media Server, including dedicated HDMI output.

The QNAP TS-464 is an impressive piece of kit. The QTS operating system is easy to use and beginner-friendly, making any QNAP NAS an ideal starting point for those new to the world of network-attached storage. This enclosure happens to be one of (if not) the best Plex NAS, thanks in large part to its specifications. There's the same Intel Celeron N5095 found inside the TerraMaster F4-423 NAS, but QNAP only officially supports up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, though we imagine (and haven't tested to confirm) 32GB should work just fine.

There are four drive bays, the same as the F4-423 from TerraMaster, but where QNAP differs its NAS is with the expansion support. Not only do we have two M.2 slots for rapid SSDs, but also a single PCI slot for installing more M.2 drive capacity or faster network connectivity. On the rear of the QNAP TS-464 are two 2.5GbE ports, multiple USB ports, and a dedicated HDMI port for hooking up your TV. It's an excellent package in an attractive chassis and runs a solid OS, making it our top pick for running your own media server with Plex. We've also compared QNAP vs. Synology if you'd like to dive deeper.

This is the NAS to buy if you want flash-only storage.

If you're looking for a NAS with excellent transfer rates, look no further than the Asustor Flashstor 6 FS6706T. This thing is rapid with six M.2 slots available for speedy SSD drives. There's 2.5GbE networking, HDMI output, expansion support, and expandable RAM, making the FS6706T an impressive NAS.

Mechanical 3.5-inch drives are still the recommended buy in 2023 for storing lots of data on a NAS, but flash storage has come down in price considerably in recent years. Manufacturers, including Western Digital and Seagate, are starting to offer NAS-focused SSDs, including M.2 drives, and the latter is precisely what the Asustor Flashstor 6 FS6706T supports with six available M.2 bays. This will help reduce power draw, noise, and vibrations, and extend the lifespan of the system before drives will require replacing.

The Intel Celeron N5105 processor is an excellent choice for this enclosure, rocking four cores and a burst speed of up to 2.9GHz. It has ample PCI lanes for all the storage slots, as well as the ability to support an expansion unit to increase the number of bays up to 14. The supported expansion unit has 3.5-inch bays, however, so it won't be 14 M.2 SSD slots. Even though M.2 SSDs should make this a silent enclosure, the single 80mm fan ensures that it's anything but, and you will need to prepare yourself for the price of NAS SSDs.

A great budget NAS for beginners and backups.

The DS220j cannot match the DS220+ in terms of raw performance, and it isn't particularly ideal for things like running multiple streams of videos. But its biggest selling point is its price. For less than $200, you get a Synology NAS that runs the same DSM 7.0 version and quality first-party apps as its much beefier siblings. Its basic hardware makes it a good deal if you want to use it only as a storage unit for all your data or as an off-site backup option.

The Synology DiskStation DS220j is an affordable NAS and one of the most budget-friendly offerings from Synology. There is the DS120j, but we don't recommend purchasing a single-bay NAS even if it's the cheapest option around. This NAS may not have all the same highlight specifications found in more expensive NAS, but it's still running the same excellent DSM OS. If all you need the NAS for is to store data or some backup files, the Synology DiskSTation DS220j is a great choice.

For connectivity, there's only one 1GbE port on the rear, joined by a few USB ports. That's all the processor will really be able to handle, being a quad-core Realtek ARM chip. The 512MB DDR3 RAM will also be a limiting factor if you plan on pushing this NAS a little further than originally designed by Synology.

A great NAS foundation for expansive storage.

The Synology DiskStation DS1522+ is an expansive NAS with five drive bays, 8GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen processor. Two additional expansion units with five bays each can be connected for a high-capacity storage solution.

The Synology DiskStation DS1522+ is a mighty enclosure with five 3.5-inch bays as standard. In our review and extensive testing, we found the NAS to be a powerful addition to the home or office with an impressive dual-core AMD Ryzen processor. It's not designed for use as a Plex Media Server, as the CPU isn't joined by graphics processing and as such will struggle slightly with transcoding media on the fly. But for storing a lot of data, you can't really go wrong here. Once all five bays are fully populated, up to two five-bay DX517 expansion units can be connected.

That's a total of 15 drive bays with an additional two M.2 slots for SSD caching or faster additions to the storage pool. The 8GB of RAM preinstalled can be expanded up to 32GB, which is more than what you'd find in many desktop systems. The best part of this NAS, like any other Synology enclosure, is the DSM operating system. Four 1GbE connections are present on the rear with a few USB ports and two eSATA for expansion. It's a pricey package, coming in at $700, but is well worth it if you're looking to go big.

This NAS uses a desktop-class Intel Core i3 chip.

The QNAP TVS-h674-i3 is a very powerful NAS. Inside is the same Intel Core i3-12100 processor that you'd find in more affordable desktop PCs, providing the QTS OS with plenty of performance headroom. The HDMI port, expansion slots, and upgradable RAM make it the perfect NAS for heavy Plex usage.

You likely won't require anything close to the QNAP TVS-h674-i3, but should you be in the market for one of the more powerful prebuilt enclosures, QNAP has you covered with its impressive TVS family of NAS. This thing has the same Intel Core i3-12100 you'd have found in more affordable desktop PCs, making it considerably more powerful than other NAS in this collection. It's priced accordingly, however, coming in at an eye-watering $1,700.

Running QNAP's own QTS operating system, the TVS-h674-i3 has 16GB of DDR4 RAM (with the prospect of expanding up to 64GB), six drive bays, two PCI slots, two M.2 slots, and two 2.5GbE connections. It's expensive, but QNAP threw just about everything inside this enclosure. Those two PCI slots can be used for additional M.2 capacity or to introduce 10GbE networking. All this tech does mean the NAS will run a little louder and be more power-hungry than other enclosures we've recommended.

We're big fans of the Synology DiskStation DS220+ and have recommended the NAS since it launched in 2020. The Intel processor, upgradable RAM, and dual 1GbE ports mean it's still capable of running the latest apps and services of today without a problem. Throw in Synology's excellent DiskStation Manager (DSM) OS and cloud platform, and you've got one of the best NAS ecosystems. This NAS is also a great choice for those looking to buy their very first NAS and want something with a little more power.

For those on a tighter budget, we'd recommend the Synology DiskStation DS220j. It's not going to win any awards for performance or expandability, but the NAS will happily act as a means for backing up some important files and running an app or service or two. Having access to Synology's DSM operating system is a huge win here because it resembles that of a modern PC, making it easy to learn the ropes and get the most out of the enclosure.

The Synology DiskStation DS220+ may be an older NAS at this point, but it's still worth considering with its powerful internals and affordable price tag.

Richard is a Senior Commerce Writer at Valnet and has been covering the technology industry for more than a decade. He's been building PCs and managing network infrastructure for just as long. When he's not creating content for Valnet, you can often find him inside a chassis somewhere.