Every NAS review these days promises you'll save money by ditching cloud storage subscriptions. I've written those reviews myself. But the truth is getting harder to swallow: AI data centers are hoarding all the RAM and hard drives, driving prices through the roof. Hard drive maker Western Digital reported it's "pretty much sold out" of hard drives, with 89% of revenue from cloud/hyperscaler customers - consumer market? A measly 5%. RAM prices have similarly skyrocketed, affecting everything from smartphones to Raspberry Pis. In the four months up to January 2026, hard drive prices were up an average of 46%. A 4TB Seagate IronWolf that cost $99 now goes for $220 - if you can find it. The cheapest 4TB NAS drive I found? Western Digital Red Plus at $195. The sweet spot is 8TB Seagate BarraCuda at $280. So a dual-drive NAS with RAID 1 mirroring (giving 4TB usable) will set you back at least $400. Cloud storage, meanwhile, costs $9.99/month for 2TB from iCloud or Dropbox, with no hardware hassle and offsite backup baked in. Oh, and that 3-2-1 backup principle? You still need an offsite copy - usually cloud. So NAS isn't replacing cloud storage; it's supplementing it.

Who should still buy a NAS? People with massive data - well over 2TB - like serious photo/video libraries or multiple device backups. Privacy-sensitive users like video editors who don't want third-party hands on their data. Even then, it's almost always a NAS-plus-cloud setup, not NAS-instead-of-cloud.

And Synology hasn't made it easy. Last year, they tried to lock users into Synology-validated hard drives - reversed after backlash, but still in place for M.2 drives. They also removed H.264 and H.265 hardware transcoding on capable hardware, shifting work to client devices to save licensing fees. So much for "you bought it, you own it."

Despite that nonsense, I still recommend the Synology DS225+. Why? DiskStation Manager is the best NAS software out there - turns a needy Linux box into a slick appliance you can control from anywhere. Version 7.4 even has a built-in AI assistant for troubleshooting. Synology offers five-plus years of software and security patches, plus an active bug bounty program. SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) lets you mix drive sizes and expand one drive at a time. The DS225+ has a 2.5GbE port - a massive upgrade from the DS224+'s 1GbE - supporting 280 MB/s reads and 210 MB/s writes. Drive installation is tool-free for 3.5-inch drives, screwdriver needed for 2.5-inch. The base unit is $360; add two 4TB Western Digital Red Plus CMR drives at ~$200 each, and you're at $760 for a setup that should last years.

Compromises? The Intel Celeron J4125 processor is from 2019 and not the fastest. It ships with 2GB RAM (upgradeable to 6GB, but RAM is pricey now). No way to add a faster Ethernet port. But honestly, for what it does, it's more than acceptable. I've tested two units and been impressed - despite the drive-lock and transcoding scars.

So, is the DS225+ for you? Only if you have a specific need for scale, speed, privacy, or sunk-cost hardware. If you're chasing a subscription-cancellation fantasy, maybe rethink. But if you need serious local storage and can stomach the inflated drive prices, it's still a great box.