Prime Day is coming soon – here are my NAS picks

Prime Day is just around the corner, and while we don’t know when Amazon’s summer sale extravaganza will begin, it will be in July – just like in previous years. We’re already seeing the first Prime Day deals, but the majority of deals will only go live as we get closer to the sales event.

I usually highlight Prime Day deals as they go live, but this time I wanted to do things a little differently; In this article, I will offer recommendations on NAS servers worthy of consideration. At this point, I don’t know if the servers listed below will go on sale during Prime Day, but I’ve been covering storage products for almost a decade now, and I have a good idea of ​​which servers have tend to be sold. to benefit from a reduction.

Previous sales also offer valuable data in this regard; The DiskStation DS923+ and DS723+ were heavily discounted during Prime Day 2023, and that will likely be the case this time as well. Since NAS servers have a longer life cycle than phones, it’s not that difficult to evaluate what’s up for sale.

Prime Day is generally the best time to pick up storage servers and hard drives, and I don’t see that changing in 2024. So if you’re looking to upgrade an existing NAS server or want to get started in this category, here are my current recommendations.

ASUSTOR AS5402T

The ASUSTOR 2-bay AS5402T is hands down one of the best home NAS servers I’ve used in the last 12 months. It has one of the best hardware packages in this segment thanks to an Intel Celeron N5105, 4 GB of RAM, two 2.5 GbE ports and three USB ports. The best part is that you get four M.2 slots in addition to the two 3.5-inch hard drive bays, so if you want to add fast SSD storage to your home server, this is the ideal choice.

ASUSTOR also does a lot of good things on the software side, and the AS5402T has a decent interface with a ton of useful features. It’s not the most polished user interface out there, but you can easily back up data and stream media through Plex without any issues. ASUSTOR needs to readjust its mobile efforts as its current offerings aren’t quite up to par, but overall the AS5402T checks all the right boxes if you want a full-featured Plex NAS.

The AS5402T typically sells for $369, which is decent on its own, but if it’s discounted anywhere near the 20% mark, it becomes an instant buy.

Synology DiskStation DS223j

The DiskStation DS223j is my ideal choice for anyone looking to venture into NAS servers. The budget 2-bay NAS doesn’t have the best hardware, but it’s an affordable gateway to the brand’s great software, and that alone is worth the asking price.

Here’s a simple way to position the DS223j; Let’s say you’re thinking about getting a home server to back up photos and documents, and you also want to stream media from a centralized location. You don’t need a full feature set, but you want something that can handle the basics with ease. This is where the DS223j excels: the NAS makes it easy to get started with home servers and is a great starting point if you’re new to the ecosystem.

Synology DiskStation DS224+

If you have a NAS and want to upgrade it, the DiskStation DS224+ is the ideal solution. This 2-bay NAS has excellent hardware and gives you access to the full suite of features available with DiskStation Manager software. Thanks to the Intel Celeron J4125, the DS224+ is the powerhouse of a NAS when it comes to Plex media streaming.

It doesn’t quite have all the extras you get with mid-range NAS servers, like multi-Gigabit connectivity and M.2 slots, but if you want a 2-bay NAS server that has some energy in reserve, you should just buy the DS224+.

The NAS was launched 15 months ago, and with its successor still in at least the same time frame, the DS224+ is the default choice if you need a powerful 2-bay server.

Synology DiskStation DS923+

Need more than two drive bays? Then your search ends at DiskStation DS923+. This NAS is powered by AMD’s Ryzen R1600 platform, has 4GB of RAM, two M.2 slots, and comes with a slot that lets you add a 10GbE network port if you need to multi-Gigabit connectivity across the board.

Basically, the DS923+ is the best NAS you can find in the mid-range segment, and to give you an idea of ​​the demand for it, it was regularly out of stock several months after its launch.

TerraMaster F4-423

TerraMaster is slowly gaining momentum, and the $459 F4-423 offers one of the best packages on the market. But the bigger problem is that the brand has finally rolled out a new iteration of its user interface, modern and significantly easier to use. This is a good thing, because it was software that held back NAS in the past.

Fortunately, there’s nothing missing when it comes to hardware; you get an Intel Celeron N5095, two 2.5GbE ports, 4GB of RAM, two M.2 slots, and four drive bays that can hold a total of 80TB of storage.

NAS hard drives

Prime Day is not only the perfect time to buy a server, but also the perfect window to grab hard drives. Most hard drives for NAS will be heavily discounted next month, and if you’re looking to increase storage on your existing server or pop drives into a new NAS, there will be plenty of deals.

I’ve always recommended Seagate’s IronWolf drives, and that continues in 2024. My old 14TB IronWolf Pro drives lasted well over 50,000 hours before upgrading to a new server, and they combine round-the-clock reliability and 7 days a week with fast transfers and long-term durability. — everything you need in a NAS hard drive.