Having helped usher in simple-to-use Wi-Fi networking in 2000 with its futuristic-looking AirPort Base Station, Apple has finally confirmed what has been reported since at least late 2016: Its line of AirPort and Time Capsule Wi-Fi gateways is dead. This comes as no surprise, given that the last updates for the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule models internals came in 2013 (to include the 802.11ac Wave 1 standard), while the compact AirPort Express has remained stuck in 2012.
Apple has, however, embedded recent Wi-Fi technology in the radio systems of its computers, mobile devices, and the Apple TV. And the company will continue to sell out its current inventory and, of course, honor its technical support and warranty obligations.
If you’re an Apple household and your home is already full of Apple base stations, you may be concerned about pivoting away and losing features you rely on, or creating a mixed network of Apple and non-Apple routers. You need not be concerned, because you actually have several options, which we describe below. As for losing out on special features, see our section on why Apple's proprietary base station features are no longer relevant.
- Best Christmas Presents for Mac Fans: 2017 Gift Guide. December 15, 2017. In addition, this router is as simple to plug and use as any of Mac other devices, so it.
- Well, we have found the most stunning option for you – Apple AirPort Extreme router. This device provides dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi with the highest speed of 1.3Gbps. Well, maybe it is not the fastest router in the world, however, its amazing design hides this small minus.
- Apple makes its network devices as easy to use as the Mac and the iPhone. And that goes a long way to effectively targeting Apple's customer. That's because, put frankly, most Wi-Fi router manufacturers absolutely suck at making their devices easy to set up and use. They require you to use web-based interfaces.
Set up your home or office network with the best wireless router. The top wireless routers offer a strong signal and security, so you can enjoy WiFi from any room. For instance, if you have created an Apple ecosystem in your house or business, buying a wireless router that does not support Mac devices would be a huge mistake.
(A tip on extending the life of your AirPort base station: If you purchase an AppleCare warranty for a Mac and have bought an AirPort base station of any vintage within the two years prior to the Mac’s purchase date, Apple extends the warranty to the AirPort gear through the duration of the AppleCare warranty. You can wind up with as much as five years of base station warranty that way.)
Drop-in replacement: A Wi-Fi router
Your router choices can come down to whether you want to sweep everything out of the house and start fresh, or you’re looking to replace or extend an existing network. The best cheap routers have effectively the same features and networking philosophy as the Apple base stations. They’re really a combination of an access point (Wi-Fi management), a router (moving packets around a network and to and from the internet), and an ethernet switch to handle devices that only have wired connections or that work best with a gigabit ethernet connection.
If you’re using or planning to use two or more of this kind of “old-style” gateway, they should be connected via ethernet. (See below why WDS or similar wireless systems aren’t reliable and reduce performance.)
Mentioned in this article
Mesh networks, described in the next section, work like gateways, but some lack ethernet switches entirely, and they have extremely robust connections among each other.
This is where your budget comes to the fore: It’s easy to drop $300 to $500 on a great, new, multi-router mesh Wi-Fi solution that fills every nook and cranny in a house and never needs to be poked. But you can also spend as little as $100 for a single gateway that could work nearly or completely as well in a more modest single-floor house, apartment, or condo.
For a single or multiple old-style router network, the Netgear R6700 Nighthawk AC1750($100) offers nearly everything you need in a drop-in AirPort Extreme replacement. You can swap out an AirPort base station and swap this in, and you might not notice the difference. It’s also a good choice for multiple units, due to its cost, or you could find Wi-Fi extenders, which connect via ethernet and are used just to fill out coverage.
The R6700 has a USB 3.0 port for hard-drive sharing, a USB 2.0 port for printer sharing, and a four-port gigabit ethernet LAN switch. A drive attached via the router can be used with ReadyDLNA, which allows streaming media from the drive to certain gaming systems and TVs. Unlike Apple’s base station, the Netgear router allows for QoS (Quality of Service) prioritization, letting you elevate audio and video streaming above other data, which improves playback. The R6700 can set up a separate guest-access network.
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The one proviso here is that we haven’t reviewed the R6700 yet, though it’s received excellent marks from customers and was the previous budget pick by the New York Times’ product review site, Wirecutter. Our sister publication PCWorld has, however, reviewed favorably the Nighthawk R7000, which has a similar feature set, potentially faster throughput, and better speed at a distance.. But it costs about $145.
Mesh networks: The new hotness
The alternative to the AirPort-style routers, both cheap and expensive, is a mesh networking system. Mesh networks don’t require configuration on each device to get them to find each other, and they don’t require an ethernet cable. Rather, mesh devices—called nodes—self-configure, making the optimum connection for routing data among themselves. The best systems help you place routers for best performance around your house or office, too. (For more information, read my in-depth explanation.)
Mesh nodes manage this with multiple radios, devoting one radio to communicating among other nodes, and with proprietary networking systems for node communication. On the Wi-Fi side, it’s all standard and all Wi-Fi devices connect as expected. The use of proprietary intra-node communication means that you can’t mix and match nodes from different manufacturers.
Mesh networking systems usually offer help through an app or visual signals (like an LED) about where to place nodes optimally for coverage. If you decide you need more coverage (or, in some cases, better throughput), you can just add more units, and the system reconfigures itself to accommodate them. Some mesh systems rely entirely on a smartphone app, available for iOS and Android, leaving out web-based or desktop app configuration, but others have both smartphone and web app options.
We’ve recently picked our top Wi-Fi systems, all of which are mesh:
- Netgear Orbi received our top marks. For $300 you can buy two nodes, a Router, and full-sized Satellite, each of which has ethernet LAN ports (3 and 4, respectively). Or, for the same price, get a bundle with the Router model and two smaller satellites, which have an integral AC power plug but no ethernet ports.
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- Linksys Velop offers better throughput through its radio design. For $340, a two-node package can blanket many houses; a three-node bundle is $450. The units include two gigabit ethernet jacks under their bases, one of which has to be connected to a broadband modem on one of the nodes.
- TP-Link Deco M5 is our budget pick, with less throughput but only costing $230 for three nodes.
Competition has dropped the prices of some of the leading mesh systems, and it’s likely the price will drop somewhat further, but with our top pick at as little as $100 per node and our budget at about $80 per node, it’s not likely to drop as much as prices have already in the last couple of years.
What about Apple’s proprietary base station features?
From Apple’s introduction of the original AirPort until just a few years ago, its base stations were often the best on the market, even if sometimes the most expensive'. However, for Mac users in particular, the gateways had Apple-specific features you couldn’t get elsewhere.
At one point it included:
- AirPlay audio passthrough (AirPort Express only)
- Easy printer networking
- Network-attached storage (NAS) with AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) and SMB support
- Base station to base station networking (via Wireless Distribution System or WDS)
- Internet access to base station configuration and NAS drives via Back to My Mac
- A network punch-through protocol called NAT-PMP for enabling remote access for applications, like games and servers
- AirPort Utility’s GUI interface
- Automated notification of firmware updates
- Time Machine support built into Time Capsule
Other features found in Apple’s base stations are easy to find in other routers:
- DHCP assignment or “reservation,” offering a permanent local network address to a device on the network
- Separate network names for 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks
- Guest networking (access to an isolated and protected network for guests)
- Timed and device-based access control
Each of Apple’s advantages has slipped away over the years:
AirPlay audio passthrough. This remained a unique feature of the AirPort Express, which features an S/PDIF-compatible (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format) analog/digital combination 3.5mm port. Plug in a regular analog cable, and you get analog out. Use a Mini TOSlink cable, and it carries digital information over an optical link to an S/PDIF port in a receiver. Apple TV models used to include a similar port, which was removed in the fourth-generation model. (I wrote an article about extracting the audio from the newest Apple TV, and reviewed a high-end HDMI audio splitter/passthrough device, which is still available at Amazon and some other retailers.) Some receivers and other devices include AirPlay, and you can use Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil to create AirPlay and similar destinations. (See “The 10 must-have utilities for macOS Sierra,” for more on Airfoil.)
Printer sharing. Even quite inexpensive printers now include Wi-Fi networking, allowing a completely cable-free connection. And most Wi-Fi routers include USB-based printer support that’s compatible with macOS (although not always with iOS).
Network-attached storage. Apple’s attached drive support used to be a big deal when OS X was oriented around AFP, and it was difficult to create networked fileservers except Mac OS X Server or personal filesharing in regular OS X. Apple shifted to SMB for network filesharing, which makes it easier to work with Windows-compatible servers. Standalone NAS drives have significantly better features and performance, and are available at all sorts of prices, not just for caviar budgets. Cloud-based storage and sync services reduce the need for network servers. And streaming and on-demand services have replaced some of the purpose for fileservers that mostly held video. If you still need a router-attached hard drive, most AirPort competitors offer USB-shared drives via SMB.
Base station to base station networking. I used to tout this feature as a great way to work around obstructions like walls and ceilings, and while the WDS that Apple used to make it work was an industry standard, only Apple seemed to have mastered it. But it became less and less reliable over time, even as data rates went up by leaps and bounds. I stopped recommending wireless base station interconnection about four or five years ago, and suggest gigabit ethernet (which can require running cable), powerline networking (which works through unmodified electrical outlets), or a mesh network (explained later) that uses a separate radio for connecting base stations.
Remote configuration and drive access. Back to My Mac (BtMM) was once a great feature, especially for people with Macs in multiple locations. However, it’s not reliable and not robust, where other remote access tools (like TeamViewer) work with aplomb. It’s rare you’d need to change your base station’s configuration outside of its LAN, and remote-drive access can be accomplished in a lot of other ways, including with many standalone NAS devices. The feature requires an iCloud account to function, and I and many users had our base stations work in a semi-useless mode until we removed the iCloud account from the base station’s configuration. From some users’ accounts, the problem remains.
Network punchthrough. NAT-PMP stands for Network Address Translation Port Mapping Protocol. While Apple developed it (in 2005), it wasn’t proprietary: it was submitted as a standard. However, it was barely picked up by any other party. Instead, the computer industry as a whole went for UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). Nearly every base station and networked piece of hardware supports UPnP, as well as multi-platform software like VNC and Plex.
AirPort Utility. Apple has long had a leg up by offering a friendly face for Wi-Fi router configuration, especially compared with the web-based administrative frontends for most other devices. Even as Apple added an iOS version of AirPort Utility, it dropped updates for the Windows flavor, locking users into configuring only from Apple hardware. In recent years, router makers have improved their web apps or added smartphone configuration apps. Some systems have very little a user needs to configure, obviating access to dozens of settings, too.
Firmware update notification. This remains a big divide between Apple’s base stations and the direct routing competition. Very few routers notify you when firmware updates appear, and I can’t find any that even let you sign up for a mailing list specific to your router. Apple provides alerts in macOS, and it’s a one-click operation to download and install. More expensive multi-device “mesh” systems automatically push new software to routers or keep most of the intelligence in the cloud.
Time Capsule. When Apple first released the Time Capsule base station, it seemed like a nifty portmanteau, packing two great features into one box at an affordable price. Over time, Apple boosted capacity substantially. But I haven’t recommended the Time Capsule for years, because the integral drive can’t be removed or managed. If Time Machine backup goes awry in a Time Capsule, your only option is to wipe the entire drive. If the Time Capsule dies, you have to crack open a case not intended to be open, extract the drive, and put it in another enclosure. While I don’t recommend Time Machine by itself, either, using a drive attached to a Mac for networked backups gives you much better alternatives. Or you might already be using a cloud-based backup service.
If you still rely on some of the above features, notably printer and drive sharing, you don’t have to give them up, though you might have to reconfigure a device or sort out the best way to make changes. For instance, when I started having trouble with an older HP printer connected via USB to an AirPort Extreme, I went through a settings wizard on the printer that had failed to work for me before, and finally got it to join the Wi-Fi network directly.
And unless you plan to dump all your working Apple base stations, you can always keep one or more running in a network for AirPlay audio streaming or printer/drive support if you still need it.
Bottom line
Even with Apple long out of the picture, you’re not missing much. The AirPort base stations unique features have mostly migrated to other devices, and macOS and iOS require less proprietary support than ever before. Mesh is the future, and its cost has dropped into a reasonable range for many households. But old-school routers like the AirPort Extreme continue to be available at affordable prices.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
Your guides
- Thorin Klosowski
- Joel Santo Domingo
After testing five new two-bay network-attached storage (NAS) devices and comparing them against our previous picks, we found that the Synology DiskStation DS218+ is the best home NAS for most people. The fastest NAS we tested, it offers powerful hardware for the price, includes AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration for added security, has upgradable RAM, and comes with software that’s easy to use.
Our pick
Synology DS218+
Easy to set up and manage, this two-bay NAS features hardware encryption, media streaming, remote access, useful apps, and solid data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $300.
In addition to speed, the Synology DiskStation DS218+ offers a variety of backup and syncing options, plus it has mobile apps for media streaming, file management, and more. It also supports a wide range of third-party apps, such as Plex, BitTorrent Sync, and GitLab. You can use the DS218+ as a home backup device, a media streamer, a mail server, a website-hosting device, a BitTorrent box, or a video-surveillance recorder—nearly anything you can do with a Linux computer, while consuming about as much electricity as a couple of LED bulbs.
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Runner-up
QNAP TS-251B
The TS-251B is almost as fast as the DS218+ and adds an HDMI port and a few more USB ports for extra connectivity.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $290.
The QNAP TS-251B is a good choice if the DS218+ is out of stock, or if you want to display media on a TV. It is almost as fast during file transfers as the DS218+ and adds an HDMI-out port so you can hook it up to a TV for media playback. It uses the same QTS management interface as QNAP’s other NAS devices—we like Synology’s DSM software a little more, but it’s largely a matter of preference.
Upgrade pick
Synology DS418play
The DS418play has similar hardware and the same software as the DS218+ but offers two more drive bays for extra storage and data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $430.
If you need more storage space, the Synology DiskStation DS418play uses the same CPU, hardware encryption engine, and hardware transcoding engine as the DS218+, but it adds two drive bays. It has one fewer USB port, but it adds another Gigabit Ethernet port for link aggregation, which can increase performance if you have a compatible router and multiple people use your NAS at once. You have access to all the same mobile apps for streaming, backup, and everything else the DS218+ offers. Since this model has two more bays than our top pick, you can use different storage configurations that offer better data protection and performance. This NAS is best suited for professionals or anyone who wants to expand a NAS system with more storage down the line.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
Synology DS218+
Easy to set up and manage, this two-bay NAS features hardware encryption, media streaming, remote access, useful apps, and solid data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $300.
Runner-up
QNAP TS-251B
The TS-251B is almost as fast as the DS218+ and adds an HDMI port and a few more USB ports for extra connectivity.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $290.
Upgrade pick
Synology DS418play
The DS418play has similar hardware and the same software as the DS218+ but offers two more drive bays for extra storage and data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $430.
The research
Why you should trust us
Thorin Klosowski wrote about consumer electronics for more than six years at Lifehacker and has extensive experience with Linux and DIY NAS devices. He has set up more backup systems, from NAS to cloud storage, for family members and friends than he cares to count.
Before joining Wirecutter, Joel Santo Domingo tested and wrote about PCs, networking products, storage, and personal tech at PCMag and PC Magazine for more than 17 years. Prior to writing for a living, Joel was an IT tech and sysadmin for small, medium, and large companies. He has professionally backed up data as diverse as news stories on plane crashes and Mariah Carey album art.
Who this is for
A network-attached storage device, or NAS, is a small always-on computer generally used for backing up computers and serving files to devices on your local network. It includes at least one but usually two (or more) hard-drive bays, a (usually) Linux-based operating system optimized for network storage, and enough CPU power and RAM to do everything it needs to do while using far less power than a repurposed old computer. Unlike a USB drive or an external hard drive, a NAS with two or more hard drives can provide data redundancy, copying the contents of one drive over to the other automatically.
A NAS is great if you have a large media library, because you can store your files in one place and stream them locally to computers, phones, tablets, speakers, or media centers throughout your house (or even outside it). The same goes for photographers storing photos, music producers archiving music files, designers stockpiling massive Photoshop files, and anyone else who needs to access large amounts of data from multiple computers. Most people don’t need to store thousands of raw photo files, terabytes of raw video, gigabytes of lossless digital music, or backups of their Blu-ray collection, but a NAS is a useful tool for the people who do.
You should consider a NAS if you have more than one computer at home, since you can back them all up to the NAS rather than connect an external backup drive to each computer. And if you want to protect your data and backups from theft and natural disasters, a good NAS is capable of uploading files directly to a cloud backup service, too.
A NAS is also useful if you have too much data to store in Dropbox or Google Drive, or if you don’t trust your data to cloud storage providers. When you use a NAS, your data remains in your home and does not go to the cloud unless you tell it to do so. Many NAS devices have even added photo-management tools and file-syncing services that attempt to replicate various cloud storage offerings. While those NAS tools aren’t as rich with features as commercial services from Google, Apple, and others, they can at least provide an adequate alternative to pricey subscriptions.
Most NAS devices can also act as email, database, and virtual private network (VPN) servers. You can use them for BitTorrent, to host CMS, CRM, and e-commerce software, or as DVRs for networked security cameras. A NAS is a computer, so it can do almost anything a Linux computer can do. While that flexibility is great, it can also make some NAS devices confusing to use. Each NAS has its own manufacturer-specific version of Linux, and some are more approachable than others.
You should consider a NAS if you have more than one computer at home, since you can back them all up to the NAS rather than connect an external drive to each computer.
If you want to share and store data on your network, you may not need a NAS. Many routers have a USB port for connecting an external drive, but because routers have slower processors than our NAS picks and because their software isn’t purpose-built for file sharing, this setup will be slow and suitable only for the most basic file sharing and backups. It will also lack data redundancy because you’re backing up to only one drive, so you’re taking your chances in case of a drive failure. Windows, macOS, and Linux also have built-in file-sharing features that make using your computer as a file server easy. But that approach takes up disk space on your computer and is more difficult to manage securely, and your computer has to be on all the time, which consumes more power than a NAS and might make the data inaccessible when your computer goes to sleep.
If you’re an IT professional looking for a business-level NAS, this guide is not for you. Nor does this guide cover more-advanced uses of NAS such as iSCSI targeting, SANs (storage area networks), or RAID configurations such as RAID 5, 6, or 10 for multidrive NAS devices. Websites focused on enterprise network storage, such as Computer Weekly and StorageReview.com, can help in those cases.
This guide also won’t cover people who want a NAS that can support 1080p on-the-fly video transcoding via Plex Media Server. Every NAS we recommend supports Plex, which works great if your box is connected directly to your display via HDMI or your videos don’t need transcoding to stream to your devices. Many NAS devices can also manage decent on-the-fly transcoding with their own apps, but Plex transcoding currently requires a lot of CPU power, and none of the models we tested were able to handle transcoding in Plex reliably. NAS boxes that can manage 1080p on-the-fly transcoding through Plex are too expensive for most people—you’re better off running Plex Media Server on a computer or on an Nvidia Shield TV and using the NAS for media storage.
You could make your own NAS with old computer hardware and free software such as FreeNAS or XigmaNAS, but a dedicated NAS device uses far less power (usually about as much as a couple of LED light bulbs), has a better interface and more apps, and comes with a manufacturer warranty and technical support. The benefit of a DIY NAS is customization; you can choose where you spend money and upgrade things basically forever. You can even keep the price pretty low with something like a Raspberry Pi–powered NAS for around $200, though even with a Raspberry Pi 3, a NAS like that won’t be very quick. If you’re curious about installing FreeNAS, this YouTube guide walks you through the process, and this forum post includes a list of hardware recommendations.
How we picked
Since this guide’s original publication in 2011, we’ve assembled a list of every two-bay NAS from a reputable vendor. Right now, that includes models from Asustor, Drobo, Netgear, Noontec, QNAP, Seagate, Synology, Thecus, WD, and Zyxel. We’ve read professional NAS reviews on CNET, PCMag, PCWorld, SmallNetBuilder, and StorageReview.com, and we’ve also looked at customer reviews on Amazon and Newegg.
Back in 2015, we surveyed 1,094 Wirecutter readers on what they wanted in a home NAS, and most of those requirements still hold true. When deciding which models to test, we paid attention to a number of key features that most home users needed:
- Two drive bays: Hundreds of NAS devices are available, and you can find models with one, two, four, eight, or more drive bays. For most home users, a two-drive NAS is just right, because it protects your data by mirroring the contents of one drive to the other (a configuration known as RAID 1, or a mirrored array). This setup gives you half the NAS’s actual amount of storage for files. For example, a NAS with two 8 TB drives in RAID 1 still has 8 TB of total space available (equivalent to about 300 Blu-rays), not 16 TB. As a result, your data remains safe and accessible even if a drive fails. Single-drive NAS devices don’t provide this data protection, and NAS boxes with more bays introduce more complex RAID configurations, such as RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, that require more planning and research to configure.
- Price: Home users don’t need to pay more than around $250 to $350 for a two-bay NAS (not including the price of the hard drives, unfortunately). More than that and you’re entering more complex and powerful business-class territory. If you opt for a cheaper model, you usually sacrifice read and write speeds or end up with a less-polished operating system.
- CPU and RAM: We preferred a reasonably powerful dual-core Intel Celeron processor, but we didn’t rule out ARM-based configurations as long as their processing speeds were similar. Most NAS devices released within the past year have at least 2 GB of RAM, so we stuck with that as our minimum.
- Hardware-level encryption acceleration: File encryption is good to use even if you access your NAS exclusively inside your home network, because it protects your data if someone breaks into your house and steals your NAS or your disks. (It can also protect sensitive data on a NAS that’s on a larger network, or one that attackers could target.) Some NAS boxes can also encrypt data before backing it up to a cloud service, providing an extra level of protection in case the cloud service is hacked. A NAS that includes hardware encryption acceleration offers read and write speeds that are much faster than those of a model that relies solely on software encryption.
- Easy-to-use software: Each NAS manufacturer has its own operating system. NAS software tends to take a kitchen-sink approach that often makes it confusing to use, but some operating systems, like those from QNAP and Synology, are better than others.
- Wide support for backups: A NAS should support computer backups via File History or system-image tools on Windows, Time Machine on Mac, and rsync for Linux. It should also allow you to back up easily to a cloud storage service like Amazon Glacier or Backblaze. And a NAS should offer a Dropbox-like file-syncing service so you can sync files across computers.
- Media-streaming capabilities: Most NAS boxes can stream videos and music to various devices in your home. You can do this using software from the manufacturer or third-party programs like Plex. Music streaming should work via DLNA and iTunes without a complicated setup process.
- Drive-failure notifications: A NAS should at the very least notify you with beeps and status lights if a drive fails. It’s better if the device can also send you an email or text message.
- At least two USB ports: Between backups, dongles, and other accessories, it’s nice to have at least two USB ports on a NAS. You should have two copies of every backup. If you plan on doing that on your own instead of with a cloud service, you’ll want to have a USB port on your NAS so you can back everything up to an external drive. It’s also nice to have a USB port on the front of the NAS with a quick-copy function so you can copy the contents of a USB drive to or from your NAS without fussing around with software.
- Third-party application support: If you want to add features or services to your NAS, you need to do so with third-party software, so support from third parties is key. This includes media center software, Web-server software, analytics, and more.
- Hot-swappable drive bays: Hot-swappable drive bays are necessary so you don’t have to shut down the NAS to replace a failed drive or increase capacity.
- Warranty and support: Lack of customer support is one of the most common complaints in Amazon reviews of NAS devices. Most of the models we tested come with two-year warranties. Most also offer some form of tech support, largely through online knowledge bases and forums. Some have email and phone support, and a few vendors also provide detailed, accessible tutorials and videos on their websites.
We also found a few features that were nice to have but weren’t dealbreakers for most people if they were missing:
- Wi-Fi support: You should connect your NAS to your router with an Ethernet cable if you want the best speeds, but if that’s not possible, you’ll need to be able to install a USB Wi-Fi dongle or PCIe expansion card.
- IP-camera DVR support: If you have a do-it-yourself home-security camera system, you’ll need somewhere to store all that video. A NAS is handy for this purpose, but the setup and management can be a bit much for an average person, not to mention the confusing licensing schemes (like this one from Synology) that determine the number of cameras a NAS supports. A NAS won’t work with popular DIY home-security cameras like the Nest Cam Outdoor or the Netgear Arlo, as those models save their footage to a cloud service instead.
- Uninterrupted power supply (UPS) support over USB: Your NAS should be smart enough not to lose everything if the power cuts out, but UPS support will communicate to the NAS to shut down properly before it loses power, which should help secure your data.
- VPN services: It should be easy to set up VPN services so you can access your home network securely from a public Wi-Fi network, but this isn’t something everyone needs, and it’s also a service that a good wireless router can already provide.
How we tested
First we set up each NAS following its included install guide, if it had one. Next we looked at the Web interface’s organization and features. We tested ease of use by configuring user and group accounts, as well as file and folder access permissions. We checked to see if the NAS offered a secure cloud service for remote access, which would avoid having to mess with port forwarding and static IP addresses. We also looked at Android and iOS mobile apps for accessing and administering the NAS.
The easiest way to measure real-world NAS performance, at least for how a home NAS will be used, is to copy files to and from the NAS and calculate the data rate. Since 2015, we’ve run read-and-write tests the simplest way we can: by copying files over Gigabit Ethernet and measuring the elapsed time. In 2018, we tested one new model, QNAP’s TS-251B, against the Synology DS218+ and the other devices we tested for our 2017 update. We installed 8 TB WD Red drives in each NAS, connected each model via Gigabit Ethernet to a Netgear Orbi router, and connected a desktop PC with Gigabit Ethernet to another port. We used Windows 10’s built-in Robocopy file-copying tool to read and write three datasets to each NAS: a 32 GB music folder with 6,154 MP3 files; and a folder with two large files, an 8.1 GB MKV file and a 7.07 GB Linux ISO file. We ran each test nine times in each direction: three times with encryption turned off, three times with disk or folder encryption turned on, and three times with in-flight SMB encryption turned on.
To simulate drive failure, we pulled a drive from the NAS while it was running. A NAS should beep or flash an LED to alert you that something is wrong, and the interface should show a drive-failure notification. If the NAS allows you to set up SMS or email alerts, that’s even better. If a drive fails and the NAS doesn’t produce a notification, you’re at risk of data loss if the second drive also fails.
Next we replaced the pulled drive with one of equal or greater capacity. A NAS should detect a new drive and automatically re-create the mirrored array. With each device, as it rebuilt the RAID 1 mirror, we confirmed that all data stored on the NAS was intact and accessible.
This process also allowed us to test the quality of each NAS device’s drive bays. A good NAS has drive trays or slots that make the drives easy to remove but are sturdy enough to ensure that the drives fit tightly and securely, with no chance of getting disconnected by a random bump.
We also connected a flash drive to one of the USB ports. A NAS interface should recognize a connected drive and display its make, model, and file system. It should allow transfers between the USB drive and the NAS.
All our NAS picks have some sort of energy-saving feature. We used a Kill A Watt EZ to test the power consumption on each NAS when it was performing a task (such as a file copy), when it was idle, and with its energy-saving options enabled.
Our pick: Synology DiskStation DS218+
Our pick
Synology DS218+
Easy to set up and manage, this two-bay NAS features hardware encryption, media streaming, remote access, useful apps, and solid data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $300.
The Synology DiskStation DS218+ is the best two-bay home NAS for most people. It typically sells for less than $350 (diskless) as of this writing, its read and write speeds are the fastest of any NAS we tested, and it includes a modern Intel Celeron processor, hardware-level encryption, and a flexible and easy-to-understand interface with a wide variety of third-party apps. The DS218+ supports media playback through its own apps or Plex Media Server, supports RAID 1 drive mirroring, alerts you to drive failure, has three USB ports (including one on the front), and supports all the features Wirecutter readers have asked about, such as the FTP protocol, VPN server capabilities, IP cameras, UPS compatibility, and SSDs.
The DS218+ had the best performance of the six NAS units we tested in 2017 and 2018, with unencrypted write speeds between 97 MB/s and 109 MB/s.
Most NAS devices in this price range use slower ARM-based processors from Realtek, Alpine, or Marvell, or older-generation Celeron processors. Some still ship with 1 GB of RAM or less. The DS218+ has a modern dual-core 2.0 GHz Intel Celeron processor and 2 GB of RAM, which you can expand to 6 GB. Our runner-up, the QNAP TS-251B uses the same Celeron processor and 2 GB of RAM, but the DS218+’s CPU is faster than the processor in nearly every other NAS currently available in this price range, and you’ll notice that speed difference when copying lots of files or performing multiple backups simultaneously. The Linux-based DiskStation Manager (DSM) software isn’t complicated; if you’ve used a Windows or Mac computer, you’ll be able to find your way around DSM and figure out how it works pretty quickly.
* indicates testing in 2018; other testing performed in 2017. Higher numbers indicate better performance.
The DS218+ had the best performance of the six NAS units we tested in 2017 and 2018, with unencrypted write speeds between 97 MB/s and 109 MB/s. (You won’t see much higher speeds from another NAS unless you’re using 10 Gigabit Ethernet or link aggregation, because these speeds are right at the limit of Gigabit Ethernet when you take encoding into account.)
The QNAP TS-251B uses the same Celeron CPU, and its performance was similar to the DS218+ during side-by-side tests, though the DS218+ was just a bit faster than the TS-251B when dealing with lots of small files. Both handily beat the TS-231P2, the WD My Cloud Home Duo, and the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo in small-file write speeds. The playing field was much more level when we tested using our folder containing two large files: The DS218+ was in a dead heat with the TS-251B in our large-file write tests, and the differences between most models we tested, aside from the Apollo Cloud 2, Duo were minimal.
Aside from the beefier processor in this model, the DS218+ (as well as all other current Synology NAS devices) uses a different default file system than others, called Btrfs (most other NAS models, including offerings from QNAP, use the ext4 file system). The file system shouldn’t have a huge effect on the file-transfer speeds, but it does introduce some features to Synology NAS units that other models don’t have, such as snapshots, which can protect folders from accidental deletion by making copies of shared folders periodically. Btrfs also features near-instant server-side copying, data integrity checks, and metadata mirroring, which supposedly helps with data recovery in the case of hard-drive damage. Most NAS owners won’t notice the differences between the two. If you do prefer ext4 for any reason, you can set up the DS218+ to use that file system instead of Btrfs when you create a volume.
You can quickly find and install new applications in Package Center.Screenshot: Thorin Klosowski
The interface in DiskStation Manager offers an overlay for system health as well as easy access to all the settings you need.Screenshot: Thorin Klosowski
You get quick access to every package you install with DSM’s drop-down menu.Screenshot: Thorin Klosowski
You can quickly find and install new applications in Package Center.Screenshot: Thorin Klosowski
The interface in DiskStation Manager offers an overlay for system health as well as easy access to all the settings you need.Screenshot: Thorin Klosowski
The DS218+ doesn’t support volume encryption to securely lock your entire drive, unlike the QNAP TS-251B, but you can encrypt individual shared folders. Even with the DS218+’s hardware encryption acceleration, you’ll still see a ding to read-and-write performance with encryption turned on. In our tests, file transfer in encrypted folders was around 60 percent of the speed of transfer in non-encrypted folders. That hardware encryption acceleration also didn’t help with SMB in-flight encryption at all, which slowed the file-transfer process to around 50 percent of the speed of unencrypted transfers. In-flight encryption protects your files during the transfer process, so it’s not something you need to worry about if you’re on your home network the whole time.
The DS218+’s interface, DiskStation Manager, is one of the most user-friendly operating systems on any NAS device. DSM has a toolbar on the top where you can access the main menu, notifications, and login options, search for files, and check on system health. Below that toolbar, you have a desktop where you can access Package Center (a store of sorts filled with add-on software), the file browser, the control panel (which includes all your settings), and a support area offering video tutorials, FAQs, and more. Synology has a demo version of the operating system available online; it’s worth checking out before you make your purchase.
Like most of the NAS operating systems we tested, the DSM interface includes a pop-out dashboard widget that gives an overview of the NAS’s drive health, as well as its processor and memory usage. You can customize the dashboard to include storage, connected users, and more. DSM also includes handy features for novices. For example, if you click on the File Services tab in the DSM control panel, it displays the key command you’ll need to access the file share on your PC (“DS218plus”) or Mac (“smb://DS218plus”). While these commands may be familiar to veteran systems administrators, new users or anyone who has forgotten the server name will welcome the embedded tip.
DSM has an optional cloud service called Cloud Station Server that allows you to access your files remotely. If you don’t want to connect to any cloud service, you can still access your NAS remotely through a virtual private network (VPN) hosted on the NAS itself or Dynamic DNS with port forwarding, but for most people Cloud Station Server is much simpler. DSM also includes Cloud Station ShareSync, which allows you to use your NAS to sync files across devices, similar to a service like Dropbox.
There’s also the confusingly named Cloud Sync package, which allows you to sync or back up specific folders or your entire NAS to various cloud platforms, such as Backblaze, Google Drive, Amazon, and Dropbox, which makes creating redundant off-site backups very easy. You can set those backups to happen on a schedule and optionally encrypt them before you upload them to another service.
DSM packs in numerous security measures. In the main menu you’ll find a security adviser that alerts you to malware, improper network configurations, out-of-date applications, weak passwords, and any systemwide configuration issues, though you will have to log in to the DSM interface regularly to see its advice. It supports HTTPS for remote access, TLS or SSL secure connections, and two-factor authentication.
For better or worse, instead of having one big app with tons of features, Synology takes a piecemeal approach to its mobile apps. DS Audio, DS File, DS Photo, DS Cloud, and DS Video are for accessing media. DS Finder is for monitoring the stats on your NAS, DS Get is for managing downloads, and DS Cam is for managing IP cameras. There’s also VPNPlus if you’re using the VPN server functions, DS Note if you use Synology’s notes app, and MailPlus if you use your NAS as an email server. All of Synology’s apps are available for Android and iOS, and they’re on a par with those of Synology’s biggest competitor, QNAP. Both companies’ mobile apps are best in class among NAS devices—no other NAS provider comes close.
Like most NAS boxes, the DS218+ supports multimedia streaming through Synology’s own apps, DLNA/UPnP, and iTunes. In our tests, the DS218+ didn’t take long to scan a music and video library and make the files available across a Wi-Fi network on various computers, TVs, game consoles, and phones.
The DS218+ supports on-the-fly hardware transcoding, supposedly all the way to 4K video. It does this using its own Video Station and DS File apps. If you prefer to use Plex, you will not have access to the hardware transcoding features, since Plex’s transcoding is CPU-bound and NAS devices in this price range just don’t have the horsepower to do that. With Synology’s apps, we were able to play several 1080p MKV files on various devices over 802.11ac Wi-Fi without issue, but when we tried the same with three different 4K movie trailers, they were all unwatchable due to stuttering. We also had issues with any 4K video using the DTS audio codec, in which no sound would play. Some formats, such as M4V, wouldn’t play at all. Files that didn’t require any transcoding, like MP4 files, played flawlessly on all devices. On-the-fly transcoding is dependent on the file format, the various codecs, and the device you’re watching the transcoding file on, so your mileage will vary here.
Still, even though Synology advertises the DS218+ as being capable of all kinds of transcoding, you’ll want to use a more powerful computer than the DS218+ (or any other NAS in this price range) if you’re serious about on-the-fly media transcoding. We recommend transcoding your video files ahead of time if you plan on using your NAS as a media server. You can do this with the Offline Transcoding feature in Video Station, though unfortunately you need to manually choose individual videos to convert. If you’re looking for an automated option, QNAP’s software allows you to set up a specific folder that the NAS monitors; the NAS then transcodes any files you drop in.
Power-saving features won’t work if you enable any media server functions, because the NAS needs to be available all the time.
In our tests, the DS218+’s aria-selected='true' tabindex='0'>Flaws but not dealbreakers
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Synology’s DSM software is easier to use than other NAS software, but it’s still not as intuitive as an operating system like Windows or macOS; even if you’re technically inclined, it will take a couple of hours to fully understand how to do anything beyond basic backups. And like most NAS makers, Synology’s customer support can be slow. We’ve see a couple of complaints in Amazon reviews that Synology doesn’t offer truly live chat and is slow to respond to support tickets. If you have problems, you’ll usually need to comb through forum posts to answer your own questions instead of contacting support.
If you plan to use the DS218+ to store video footage from an IP camera, you have to license each camera on your home surveillance system. You get two of those licenses for free, but beyond that you have to pay $50 per camera. QNAP, along with most other NAS makers, has the same licensing system.
Runner-up: QNAP TS-251B
Runner-up
QNAP TS-251B
The TS-251B is almost as fast as the DS218+ and adds an HDMI port and a few more USB ports for extra connectivity.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $290.
If the Synology DS218+ is out of stock or if its price jumps significantly higher, the QNAP TS-251B is an excellent alternative. It also includes an HDMI-out port, which is handy for monitoring surveillance systems or if you want to view media directly from your NAS connected to a TV.
Like the DS218+, the TS-251B uses an Intel Celeron J3355 processor and 2 GB of RAM, which is significantly faster than the older Celeron and ARM-based processors in the other NAS devices we’ve looked at. While the DS218+ is a bit faster when transferring lots of smaller files, like during our music folder transfer tests, they are so close in performance that you’d likely not notice the difference unless you were monitoring both with a stopwatch. Like the DS218+, we recorded speeds of 109 MB/s for large multi-gigabyte files, and around 90–101 MB/s transfer rates for folders filled with thousands of music files. Unlike our main pick, the TS-251B can encrypt whole volumes, not just folders. Both the DS218+ and TS-251B are fast for home file storage and background tasks like backing up your family's laptops, downloading torrents, and automatically transcoding videos from a queue.
The TS-251B is easy to upgrade, thanks to its PCIe-card expansion slot. QNAP offers SSD caching, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 expansion cards. We don’t think most home users will need these features or even need to know why you’d want them, but they’re nice additions for those who do.
QNAP’s excellent user interface, called QTS, is similar to Synology’s DSM and offers the same features, including media streaming capabilities, a file manager, photo and video apps, video-surveillance functions, backup options, and the App Center, from which you can install many more apps such as Plex Media Server. Design-wise, QTS takes at least some of its inspiration from iOS, loading up all your add-on packages as icons on a desktop. As with DSM, it’s a good idea to check out the live demo of QTS before you buy so you can see how it works.
Like the DS218+, the two-bay TS-251B uses RAID 1 to mirror data across disks, and in our tests it adequately reported drive failure by beeping several times and sending a notification to the email address we’d set up ahead of time. When we pulled out a drive and inserted a fresh one to simulate replacing a failed drive, it rebuilt its array without trouble.
QNAP provides a two-year warranty and excellent support both over the phone and via an online forum, plus a knowledge base and tutorials.
Upgrade pick: Synology DiskStation DS418play
Upgrade pick
Synology DS418play
The DS418play has similar hardware and the same software as the DS218+ but offers two more drive bays for extra storage and data protection.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $430.
A two-bay NAS is the best option for most people who want to use theirs for home backup, but if you need more capacity or data protection, get the Synology DiskStation DS418play. This model has the same CPU and memory specs as the DS218+, but with two more drive bays. The DS418play has one fewer USB 3.0 port on the back but offers dual Gigabit Ethernet for link aggregation; this feature doubles the network bandwidth available to your NAS, though not many home routers support that function.
A NAS with four or more bays gives you more storage options than a two-bay NAS does. For starters, you can opt for RAID 5, 6, or 10; those data storage configurations require three or more disks but provide better data protection and (depending on which RAID configuration you choose) can offer better performance. A four-bay NAS also lets you expand your storage capacity more easily since you can start with two drives and add more as needed, whereas the only way to expand the storage space on a two-bay NAS is to replace first one drive and then the other with higher-capacity drives.
Four-drive NAS devices are typically more suited to professional settings—and if you want to use one, having a good understanding of RAID storage management will help. But if you have the extra dollars, want additional data redundancy and space, and don’t mind learning more about RAID, the DS418play is a good bet.
NAS care and maintenance
When you first set up a NAS, it prompts you to log in to its interface via a browser, typically with the “admin” account and no password. Very few NAS devices prompt you to change or reset the admin password—doing so, however, is a crucial security step, because the NAS connects to the Internet and is thus a ripe target for threats. So the first thing to do with any new NAS is to change the password on the admin account (both Synology and QNAP prompt you to do this during the initial setup).
Creating a unique user account for each person who accesses your NAS is a good idea. You can do so on any of the NAS devices we tested by going into the user settings in the interface. Be sure to give each user the appropriate permissions—you don’t want everyone to have god-level admin access to your NAS! If you want to give someone the ability to upload files to the NAS, give that user write permissions as well as read permissions. If someone should only download files, make them a read-only user.
Maintaining a NAS doesn’t take much effort, but you should keep a few things in mind. Because a NAS is almost always on, place it in a location that doesn’t get too hot, and ensure that it gets sufficient airflow—confirm that the back panel has a few inches of clearance so as not to obstruct the exhaust fan. When something goes wrong with a NAS, the culprit is usually drive failure, and according to this infographic from Seagate, temperature extremes are one of the top five causes of hard-drive failure.
Data corruption is another big issue with hard drives. Because most NAS devices ship diskless, you’ll have to provide and install your own drives. Be sure to check the compatibility list of hard drives on the NAS vendor’s website so that you install supported drives. Otherwise, if something goes wrong with the NAS, you may have problems getting customer support—or worse, you may discover that you voided the warranty.
The same rule applies to memory: If you buy a NAS that allows you to add RAM, check with the vendor to make sure that you purchase supported memory.
Every NAS device in this guide supports WD Red hard drives, which are specifically built for NAS use. WD engineers designed these drives to tolerate heat and vibration better than typical hard drives (though not as much as enterprise-server drives), so these drives are ideal for multidrive NAS setups. They’ve received accolades from both professional reviewers and NAS owners because they provide good performance and large storage capacity at a decent price. TechRadar explains, “The WD Red 6TB performs excellently, offers a gargantuan amount of storage and is a more affordable proposition than enterprise 6TB hard disks.” Seagate, another favored hard-drive manufacturer for NAS, has its own line of drives specifically for this purpose.
What to look forward to
Other NAS makers have been playing catch-up to QNAP and Synology on the operating system front, and while those other competitors are still nowhere near the usability of either in that regard—and most still have terrible customer support—they’re at least getting closer with their operating systems. If you’re curious, nearly every NAS maker, including Asustor, Thecus, and Zyxel, offers a live Web-based demo of its operating system that’s worth checking out.
The competition
As we mentioned above, both Synology and QNAP sell many, many NAS devices, all of which run the same software but vary in processor type and speed, RAM, number of drive bays, and features. Our picks offer the best combination of performance, features, and price for most home users, and Synology’s and QNAP’s respective software offerings are more powerful and polished than those of other NAS makers. Our testing over the years has reinforced this conclusion, as has AnandTech’s two-part dive into NAS operating systems and features.
Since 2015, we’ve tested a lot of NAS devices, including many that are now discontinued, such as the QNAP TS-251A, QNAP TS-251, Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay Home Media Storage Device, Synology BeyondCloud Mirror, Synology DiskStation DS214, Synology DiskStation DS216play, Synology DiskStation DS216+II, Asustor AS-5002T, and WD My Cloud EX2. Some are still available but use older CPUs, are priced too high, or fail to meet our memory requirements, such as the Asustor AS-202TE and Synology DiskStation DS216.
The WD My Cloud Home Duo is WD’s take on a beginner NAS, but the simplified design of the operating system introduces more problems than it solves. The My Cloud Home Duo needs to be connected to the Internet if you want to use all its features, even within your home network. You’re also required to use the WD Discovery software to mount a user directory on the My Cloud Home Duo, and it needs an Internet connection to do so, for some reason. You can mount the Public folder directly to skip over WD’s software, but in that case you lose access to any files stored in the user directory, which for most people is everything. And in our tests, reading and writing to a user folder was far slower than using the Public one: When we mounted the Public folder on the My Cloud Home Duo, we saw write speeds at a little less than 80 MB/s, but when we ran the same write tests on the user folder—the method most people will use—the speeds dropped to 15.62 MB/s. WD’s support page doesn’t offer any explanations or solutions.
We also tested the QNAP TS-231P2, which is part of QNAP’s budget line. The TS-231P2 lagged the TS-251B on our read-and-write tests, and includes hot-swappable drives and hardware encryption. The TS-231P2 is a solid NAS, and if it drops in price, if you have no need for an HDMI port, or if you hate even just the possibility of a karaoke party breaking out anywhere near you, it’s worth a look.
We also looked at the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo. Like the WD My Cloud Home Duo, the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo is a simplified NAS and comes packed with hard drives already installed. Unfortunately, it lacks basic features and third-party app support, including stuff like Plex, which even the WD model has. Its read and write tests were also extremely slow compared with the results from other NAS boxes we tested. When we reached out to Apollo for clarification on these results, representatives replied that the Cloud 2 Duo uses in-flight encryption by default and the user cannot disable it. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since the WD My Cloud Home Duo doesn’t support encryption of any kind, it is unfortunate that you can’t adjust those settings in exchange for a speed boost when you’re in a secure environment.
Samara Lynn contributed to a previous version of this article.
Footnotes
- We have not yet tested power consumption of the TS-251B, but don't expect it to differ from that of the TS-251A.Jump back.
Sources
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- Craig Ellison, QNAP TS-X51A Series Reviewed, SmallNetBuilder, August 30, 2016
- Chris Finnamore, QNAP TS-251A, Trusted Reviews, November 4, 2016
- Jon L. Jacobi, QNAP TS-251A NAS Review: More media features than you can shake a stick at, TechHive, January 26, 2017
- 5 Top Causes of Hard Drive Failure, Seagate, January 17, 2014
- Orestis Bastounis, Western Digital Red 6TB review, TechRadar Pro, November 20, 2014