Best NAS devices in 2025

Have you ever found yourself requiring more storage than what's available inside your PC or mobile device? Network-attached storage (NAS) is a great way to expand network-wide storage capacity. As well as offering plenty of storage space, a NAS enclosure can also run apps and services, offering new functionality to all connected clients, whether you wish to run a media streaming service at home or set up a website and internal services in the office. Here's a list of my favorite NAS enclosures.

My favorite NAS devices for 2024

The F4-424 Max is one of the TerraMaster's latest offerings, and the company has outfitted it with pretty much every facility you can ask for in a NAS. It's powered by a 10-core, 12-thread Intel Core i5-1235U CPU, which is more than capable of any transcoding and home lab workloads you throw at it. The pre-installed 8GB DDR5 RAM stick is on the lower side, but you can swap it with two 32GB modules to get a total of 64GB RAM.

Each HDD bay on this beast can be populated with a 22TB drive, bringing its total storage capacity to 88TB - and that's before you include the two M.2 SSDs (PCIe 4.0 x4) you can add to the NAS. Couple that with its LAG-compatible dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and support for JBOD and TRAID setups, and you have an absolute war machine of a NAS in your hands.

If I have to complain about anything, it's that the F4-424 Max is a bit costly for the average user. But if you're someone who can use the extra horsepower and drives, the TerraMaster F4-424 Max is more than worth the $900 price tag.

The Asustor Nimbustor 2 Gen2 (AS5402T) should be considered the better buy if you don't mind spending slightly more on NAS hardware. Inside the AS5402T is an Intel Celeron N5105 processor with four physical cores and a boost speed of up to 2.9GHz. There's 4GB of RAM preinstalled, which can be expanded up to 16GB. 4GB should be more than enough for most home uses, but it's good to know you can push it further with the two available DIMM slots. Two drive bays support up to 40TB of raw capacity, not taking into account a RAID setup.

Where this NAS truly shines over the DS224+ is with the four M.2 slots, expansion unit support (up to 14 drive bays), and two 2.5GbE connections to get you up and running. There are a few USB ports and a HDMI port for media consumption. This NAS is more than capable of handling the transcoding of larger files, but having a dedicated port is great for bypassing this with a direct TV connection. It's expensive compared to the Synology NAS, but has notable upgrades that make it a better fit for a busier office or home.

While the Asustor Nimbustor 2 Ge2 (AS5402T) may be considered overkill and pricey compared to other options, it's ideal for heavier use with its powerful Intel processor and M.2 slots for rapid storage.

Our favorite NAS for Plex is the impressive QNAP TS-464 and its sheet of specifications. The most important specification for any Plex NAS is the CPU and the Intel Celeron N5095 with its four physical cores and 2.9GHz speed is more than enough for 4K transcoding and streaming. Then there's the 8GB of DDR4 RAM, which cannot be expanded. We've also got HDMI output and an IR receiver for remote controls, allowing you to turn this enclosure into a powerful media center. To top it all off, QNAP threw in two M.2 slots and a PCIe 3.0 expansion slot for good measure.

On the rear are two 2.5GbE network stacks and various USB-A ports for connecting just about everything. It's a high price to pay, especially with the four drives you'll need to buy to fully populate the TS-464, but this is about as good as you can get for the price when it comes to Plex. I reviewed this NAS positively over on Android Police, should you be interested in learning more. It's an expensive enclosure but one with an excellent set of features, including HDMI output and IR support for remote controls.

SBCs like the Raspberry Pi can work as a NAS when you're in a bind. But their lack of SATA connections and weaker ARM CPUs make them rather terrible for the average NAS enthusiast. In stark contrast to its SBC brethren, the ZimaBlade is specifically designed to act as a storage server.

For starters, the base model packs an x86 Intel Celeron N3350 CPU that operates at a mere 6W of power. On the memory front, you're looking at a single slot that can support up to 16GBs of DDR3L RAM. While the single 1 Gigabit port is kind of a downer, you do get the ability to load any operating system on the SBC. Sure, the ZimaBlade has the ultra-useful CasaOS installed, but the fact that you're not locked behind a single proprietary OS makes this SBC fairly useful for fans of TrueNAS Scale, Unraid, and the other NAS operating systems.

You likely won't require the QNAP TVS-h674 NAS, but it would be awesome to own one. The QNAP TVS-h674-i3 we're recommending here is essentially a desktop PC inside a NAS server box. The processor is the same Intel Core i3-12100 you'd find in low-end budget-friendly desktop PCs. It's a quad-core processor with a maximum boost speed of 4.90GHz, which is a considerable amount of power. This makes the QNAP NAS ideal for heavier workloads such as virtualization, surveillance management, and media streaming with a lot of transcoding.

All of this performance comes at a price, however, and that's with the price tag and power draw. Thankfully, the rest of the TVS-h674-i3 is just as good as the chip running it, consisting of six drive bays, 16GB of DDR4 RAM (maximum of 64GB), and two M.2 slots. There's a full-size PCIe 4.0 x16 slot inside this NAS, as well as a smaller x4 PCI slot for all your required expansion cards. Then there are two 2.5GbE network connections on the rear, alongside USB-C, USB-A, and even HDMI. This NAS has it all and is a great choice for more advanced NAS owners.

Thanks to their small form-factor and low power consumption, all-flash NAS devices are exploding in popularity, and the TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus is one of the best options on the market for SSD lovers. Standing upright with a width of just 195mm, it's a compact NAS that can be installed just about anywhere inside the home.

Under the hood, you'll find a 4-core, 4-thread Intel Core i3-N305 CPU and 16GB of DDR5, which are more than enough for all the tasks you can throw at this NAS. For the storage, the F8 SSD Plus packs eight M.2 SSD slots without any bays for 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives. Thankfully, you do get a 10 GbE port to complement the high-speed SSDs.

The TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus undoubtedly costs a fair amount, and so does NVMe storage. But for those willing to invest in this NAS, you'll get a super-fast storage server with little noise, less power draw, and no vibrations.

The Synology DiskStation DS223j is one of the most affordable enclosures from the company. Instead of an AMD or Intel processor, we're looking at a Realtek RTD1619B ARM chip. Apple has done wonders with its silicon for its Macs, but these Realtek processors are nowhere near as powerful, resulting in sluggish performance if you try and do any heavy lifting. Still, the Ds223j is good to go for storing lots of data, thanks to the two available drive bays, and can even double as Plex Media Server, so long as you don't plan on streaming 4K content. No expansion support, no M.2 slots, and a single 1GbE network port allow for this NAS to be so affordable, making it an ideal buy for those looking for their very first NAS to test the waters.

If you're just starting with your first NAS enclosure, this affordable unit may be just what you need. It has the same excellent DSM operating system from Synology, and has decent performance for the price, yet there is a limit to what it can do with no expansion support, a single network link, and an ARM processor.

The Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen2 AS6704T is a powerful NAS for the price, including an Intel Celeron N5105 processor, 4GB of RAM from the factory, and four drive bays. The system memory can be upgraded to a total of 16GB and the four bays can be supported by the available four M.2 slots. If all that wasn't enough already, Asustor threw in a PCIe expansion slot for installing a 5GbE or 10GbE network card. There's HDMI and a few USB ports on the rear of the enclosure for good measure, allowing you to connect everything in the home and run all your favorite apps and services. We'd recommend this NAS for more advanced users where the available power can be utilized for heavier workloads.

How to choose the perfect NAS

Whether you're a beginner choosing your first NAS or a seasoned veteran looking for yet another storage server, the process is very much the same. First, consider how much storage space will be required. Each drive bay can usually handle a 20TB hard drive, though newer NAS will be able to utilize the largest hard drives on the market and some have reached a whopping 24TB. All the NAS we recommend here don't come with any drives (they're diskless) but they all run a powerful version of a Linux OS, which can be interacted with through a web browser. Additional features such as M.2 slots, 2.5GbE networking, PCI expansion slots, and HDMI are usually reserved for more advanced users.

For hardcore users, the TerraMaster F4-424 Max is simply brilliant. The i5-1235U processor, upgradable RAM, dual 10GbE ports and four drive bays (+ two M.2 slots) provide enough performance and storage space to get up and running with a powerful home NAS. Heck, it can even handle your average home lab workloads involving VMs and containers.

That said, even a budget-friendly Synology DiskStation DS223j would make for a compelling NAS for the home. If all you care for is to save money on cloud storage subscriptions, this would be the way to go, and provides access to one of the best NAS operating systems.

FAQ

Q: How much should you spend on NAS?

It's possible to spend a lot of money on a NAS enclosure, depending on how many drive bays are present, the processor used, whether the RAM is upgradable, and how quick the networking stack is. The more you splash out on a NAS, the better the specifications will be and the more you will be able to do with the server. It all depends on your budget and needs. A NAS costing $200 is great for a starter server and storing files whereas a $400 NAS will be better suited to stream media, manage surveillance cameras, and other more intensive tasks.