Synology knows what it's doing when it comes to making the best home NAS servers, and in the last 12 months, the Taiwanese brand built out its budget portfolio. The DiskStation DS224+ that I reviewed last year still leads the way in this segment thanks to its powerful hardware and Plex transcoding, but there are many more alternatives available.
The DiskStation DS223j is a good entry-level NAS that delivers the essentials at just $189, but it's the vanilla DiskStation DS223 that is the more enticing choice. The DS223 is a 2-bay NAS sold in the Value series, and this is different to the Plus series in that you get just a single Gigabit port and no upgradeability; the DS224+ has a standard SODIMM slot that lets you increase the RAM to 6GB, but on the DS223, you get a 2GB RAM module that is soldered to the mainboard.
