The answer — one pick, priced
Get the
Synology DS223j
$40 under your budget
The only NAS under $250 our 11 sources still back — full Synology DSM on ARM, for file backup, a photo library and Plex direct play.
Fit ledger — need → measured evidence
■ The catch — co-equal billing, always
1 GB of RAM, soldered, and one gigabit port. No Docker, no hardware transcoding, and multitasking crawls. This is a file-and-photo box that happens to run great software — buy it knowing it will never become a media server.
Dealbreaker? Step up to the DS225+ ($365) the moment Plex enters the plan ↓
■ Every product has a catch. Verdicts that hide it are how bad buys happen.
Don't buy this if…
- you need a simple external drive for backups, not a network-attached deviceexternal hard drives dossier →
- you need enterprise or rackmount NAS for a business datacenter
Wrong product for you is still a bad buy. These are the cases where we'd send you somewhere else.
Runners-up — if your needs differ
Adjacent verdicts — other needs, same method
Different budget, different household, different job — each of these is already researched, priced and verified. Take the one that matches your need.
Traps — this verdict avoids
Why the Synology DS223j is right for you
It avoids every trap below — and for anyone, under $250, it is the pick because it delivers:
The drives are not included
Every NAS price you see is for an empty box. An 8TB WD Red Plus (CMR) is ~$259, about $32/TB — so four of them add ~$1,036, and a $657 4-bay is really a ~$1,693 purchase. Bay count is the biggest lever on total spend.
Half of them cannot transcode
Plex and Jellyfin hardware transcoding needs Intel Quick Sync. AMD Synology units (DS925+, DS1525+) and every ARM unit (DS223j, TS-233, DH4300 Plus) can only direct-play. And transcoding also needs Plex Pass at $5/month or $120 lifetime — the hardware alone does not unlock it.
RAID is not a backup
A mirror or parity array survives a dead drive, not deletion, ransomware, fire or theft — and consumer NAS units are an active ransomware target. Budget a second copy off the NAS, which at ~$259 per 8TB roughly doubles the drive bill.
Provenance — 11 sources, dated
Winners are picked from the full research dossier at knowledgelib.io. Prices, stock and listings are re-verified monthly.