The 7 Best na boxes (2023 reviews)

We consider a na box to be a worthy investment in the long run. We are here to help you choose the right one for your purposes from all the best available products in market today.

Our review process: Show/Hide

Our Top Picks:

Best Overall: Buy: Synology na box READ REVIEW

Best With minimal learning curve: Buy: Synology Plex Server READ REVIEW

Best For SMB With High Performance requirements: Buy: Terramaster na box READ REVIEW

Best With old school computers: Buy: QNAP na box READ REVIEW

Best For applications: Buy: Terramaster mobile Device READ REVIEW

Best For Raid Nas situations: Buy: Western Digital na box READ REVIEW

Best For rack mountable networking gear: Buy: Electriduct na box READ REVIEW

Best Overall: Synology na box

Buy on Amazon

If you want nothing short of the optimal box for your regular usage, this synology na box is certainly a wise investment. The DS920+ supports hot swapping your existing drive(s) to expand the size of your storage with larger drives if you need more storage in the future. It has the esata port for the dx517 5 bay expansion box for 9 total drives. It takes about 5-10 seconds to spin them up after they have gone into power saving mode. You can connect any computer to it over the network, it is just a nice Linux box sharing its drives over the network.

It provides sequential read and write throughput of over 225 mb/s to expand the size of your storage with larger drives if you need more storage in the future. There is an indexing service that can be enabled which will significantly speed up searches when you look for files on your NAS and much faster than otherwise would be the case. If you are using it as a integral means for file services then it is a nice feature and reduces the amount of wait time. It is perfect for emby/plex rendering.

• Versatile and well worth the extra money
• Makes a great backup target for timemachine and anything else around the house
• Responsive, easy to use, small office storage

Best With minimal learning curve: Synology Plex Server

Buy on Amazon

If you often find yourself scrambling for convenient and suitable box, synology plex server is your end point. It is a powerful and compact 6-bay network attached storage solution designed to store and protect critical data assets. It does a simple mirror with two drives and switches over to other modes like raid5 as soon as you add a third drive. The Surveillance Station helps you protect your home or business by offering the ability to manage multiple network cameras, check live camera feeds from anywhere with the mobile app, catch suspicious incidents quickly with intelligent alerts, and easily find relevant recordings.

It supports l2tp/ipsec so you can use the built-in vpn for iphone / mac, no third party apps required on your devices. It is great for a pandemic plex server. It will save you loads of time. It comes with support for vmware, citrix, and microsoft hyper-v, and diskstation serves as a seamless storage solution for virtualization environments.

• Great for home movies and file storage
• Works perfectly with x520 sfp+ network card
• Worked seamlessly for configuring backups for a few macs
• You can add more drives to your raid array

Best For SMB With High Performance requirements: Terramaster na box

Buy on Amazon

Compared with other box in this category, the terramaster na box has a convenient design. It is a good choice for a home-based nas. It's fast and very powerful. It's compatible with upnp/dlna protocol and can stream videos to various multimedia devices, including computers, smart phones, media players and televisions. It all works very well, and the web based home screen is very clean and easy to navigate. It feels extremely well made and really gives off a premium vibe.

This unit can stand alone without turning on the PC. It's very easy to setup and use, even if you haven't ever used one before. It's also a good choice for a home-based nas.

• You will spend a lot of time via ssh
• Extremely well made, easy to setup & use, fast & powerful, works well
• Good investment for long term

Best With old school computers: QNAP na box

Buy on Amazon

Not everyone likes to purchase box for their daily purpose, but the qnap na box would be an anomoly. It is a disk storage unit that can act as a backup for a nas system. It can be managed from a QNAP NAS and you can password protect data from within the app, but you cannot password protect the actual drive itself. It will act as a stand-alone unit connected to your pc where you can share the files over a network. It monitors the health overall and each individual drive.

The side rails are plastic and less than "stellar. These are made for very high reliability. It runs independent of any connected computer.

• It doesn't have a cpu, so no ghz rating
• From one computer to another, you may accidentally loose everything stored on it
• One of the new comers and featured product

Best For applications: Terramaster mobile Device

Buy on Amazon

The terramaster mobile device is suitable and reliable and fits well with your regular usage. It is a great two bay nas media server. It comes with a docker hub, a wide-ranging built-in image repository, where users can access shared applications from other developers in the community. It is built for nas function and raid capable for single drive use. It works well on first setup, without any 'gothas', or get out and start over routines.

The Terramaster device is attached directly to the cable modem, wireless access point, and users can access shared applications from other developers in the community. It is suitable for applications ranging from home multimedia entertainment to small office and home office (soho) settings.

• Good to be able to use hdds and/or ssds for the storage drives
• Low-cost and capable, but slow transfers, clunky software interface
• Great for a home or small-medium business
• Fast transfer over 1 gbe or via usb3 interface for really big files

Best For Raid Nas situations: Western Digital na box

Buy on Amazon

The western digital na box is suitable and reliable and fits well with your regular usage. The PR4100 works very well as a media server (iTunes, PLEX), a personal cloud, a Mac Time Machine device, or simply as a network attached drive which can be mapped to and accessed by any computer on the network. You’ll find they are usually well-priced, resilient, super-quiet, and very fast.

The PR4100 comes in a default RAID 5 array, allowing the user to swap a failed drive without losing any data. It's very quiet when in standby mode, which it'll enter when not being used. There is a higher version of this drive that’s designed for 4k recording. These are very quiet, reliable, and provide reasonably fast readwrite times. It is great for movies and tv shows.

• Like physically offsite and plugged into another ip and network
• User interface is simple, powerful, and elegant over standard webpage
• Great system for storage and media viewing
• Media files loaded quickly via usb

Best For rack mountable networking gear: Electriduct na box

Buy on Amazon

The electriduct na box should be able to handle its purpose and duties with ease. If you need to store smaller networking equipment or even cctv equipment, this unit is more than plenty to store those items inside. It is a wire management and cable protection e-tail company that supplies products to those who are concerned about protecting their electronic equipment investments and also worried about the costs of safety workplace. This also leaves just enough room for a small switch and JUST BARELY enough room to plug it in.

It is designed for rack mountable networking gear. It is the ideal solution and it looks great too.

• Vented side panels, adjustable mounting rails with mounting screws
• Solid rear panel with mounting holes
• Heavy enough steel for its size and purposes
• Affordable enclosure, well built, perfect for home usage