These are the best NAS options for any and all home owners

Best NAS for the Home Windows Central 2019

If you’re gearing up to buy a NAS for your household, Black Friday is a great time to take advantage of deals across a range of servers. Some of the NAS models featured in this collection will likely be on sale for Black Friday, but if they’re not, you’ll be able to spot other excellent alternatives. We’re updating our buyer’s guides to ensure we’re offering the best buying advice, and our deals team is on red alert, continually seeking the best deals on NAS servers, which we’ll feature right here.

Best Overall: Synology DS218+

Powered by a competent dual-core Intel Celeron J3355 (2.0GHz) and 2GB DDR3L (6GB max) RAM, the DS216+ by Synology is not only a well-designed black box, but it is also a capable streaming machine for the home. The system supports H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), MPEG-2, and VC-1 at a maximum resolution of 4K (4096×2160, 30 frames per second). This device will certainly put that shiny new 50-inch 4K TV to good use.

Its hot-swappable drive tray design allows for easy installation and maintenance, destroying the requirement for a screwdriver to remove or install a hard drive. Simply pull out, swap, re-insert, and you’re good to go. Two hard drive bays are joined by USB 3.0 and eSATA ports. This product does not come with any hard drives, but there are some great NAS drives available. Throw two of these into the NAS to enjoy massive amounts of storage using RAID for redundancy.

Overall, this is a great, well-rounded package. You should purchase the Synology DS218+ if you’re looking for an affordable NAS that can scale to cope with a large family or small office. Not only will you be able to keep backups and important documents safe, but also enjoy some media thanks to Plex support. It can handle movie and music streaming, surveillance recording, and much more.

The QNAP TS-251B is similar to Synology’s DS218+ in multiple ways. It houses a similarly powered CPU, RAM, number of drive bays, and support for third-party services. Like Synology, QNAP has its own NAS OS, which is user-friendly and powerful, allowing you to configure the server to do a whole host of tasks.

While the NAS isn’t powerful enough to transcode and stream 4K content, it’s more than capable of handling most tasks you’d likely perform on the server. Support is offered for external services and platforms, and QNAP also makes it possible for multiple isolated Linux systems to run.

You could think of the Synology DS1618+ being the DS218+ but with an additional four bays. That’s a total of six drive bays for up to 96TB worth of storage, making it perfect for households with extensive offline media collections and plenty of connected devices.

Powered by a capable quad-core Intel Atom C3538 CPU, it’s possible to stream a movie while other members of the household do other tasks on the NAS — just don’t expect this server to be able to transcode 4K content if your receiving device doesn’t support the same format.

If you need a NAS with plenty of storage, this is a great option, should your budget be able to cover the price. The only downside could be the rather flimsy drive bays themselves, which could break if you’re not too careful.

Instead of including a more expensive Intel processor, Synology opted for the Marvell Armada 3700 88F3720 CPU, which is perfectly fine for efficient NAS operation, but may struggle when you want to do more demanding tasks. In fact, as of right now, Plex isn’t supported, but what the DS119j does well is offering exceptional value.

If you simply need to store a few files and don’t need to do anything with your NAS like run a media server, a surveillance system, or other demanding tasks, the DS119j will be enough — it’s especially good for those new to the world of NAS, wanting an affordable device to test out.

The F2-221 comes rocking excellent specifications, comprised of an Intel Apollo J3355 dual-core CPU, two Gigabit LAN ports, 2GB DDR3 RAM (expandable up to 4GB), and two USB 3.0 ports. It’s not the most potent NAS available, but at this price, you’re getting a lot for your money.

Unfortunately, this TerraMaster NAS is let down by the OS, which, while good, simply doesn’t match QNAP or Synology. The initial setup process is also a little less polished. Like other diskless NAS listed in this collection, you’ll need to factor in the price of hard drives you plan to install inside the two bays.

If you’re ready to jump into the deep end with network-attached storage, it’s time to go with a QNAP NAS equipped with a powerful Intel Core i5 processor. This unlocks additional performance headroom, allowing yet more family members to get online and enjoy stored content on the NAS, not to mention better transcoding support.

This NAS doesn’t only have a more powerful CPU than most other servers available, but also four Gigabit ports for rock-solid connectivity, 16GB RAM (upgradable to 64GB), eight drive bays, and even a remote control. The VS-882BRT3-i5-16G would also work as a video file storage box for video editing workstations.

If you can somehow afford this NAS, it’s well worth it for busy and tech-savvy households.

Choosing the right NAS for your home

The Synology DS218+ is an excellent piece of kit, allowing you to effortlessly set up a home NAS, regardless as to which model you choose. You’ve got an Intel processor that can handle even some HD transcoding, as well as anything else you need to throw at your home server.

But it’s not the best option for everyone, which is where our other options come in. Whether you need ample storage space, the most affordable NAS available, or something that isn’t made by Synology, we got you covered with this collection of the best NAS for your home.

Ready to get serious with NAS? Go with the incredibly powerful QNAP TVS-882BRT3-i5-16G when you’re good to move up to the next level.

How to find the best Black Friday deals on NAS servers

When beginning your research for a new NAS, you need to consider a few essential factors. First of all, do you need a fancy, expensive NAS? Probably not, especially if it’s your first home server. You’ll need to consider price, bays for installing drives (more bays = more capacity), the available RAM, which processor is installed, the operating system, and what third-party services you may want to use.

We’re expecting to see plenty of sales across numerous NAS models this Black Friday. You’ll likely see promotions on NAS servers from top brands, including Synology, QNAP, and TerraMaster. Whether you need a basic entry-model or a fully-fledged premium media server, there’ll be a deal for everyone. Our deals squad enjoys finding the best Black Friday discounts on NAS servers, making Windows Central the go-to destination for NAS deals this year.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

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