Best NAS for a Home Office in the UK

Most UK home offices should buy the Synology DiskStation DS225+: two bays, a 2.5GbE network port and memory you can upgrade. Before you order drives for it, check Synology's compatibility list, for reasons explained below. The four-bay DS425+ is the step up for a small team, and the QNAP TS-233 is the plain two-bay alternative with no drive list to work around.

A NAS (network-attached storage) is a small computer full of drives that every device on your network can reach. It makes a good shared folder and a good backup target for several computers. It is not a backup plan on its own, because it sits in the same building as the computers it protects.

We have not tested these models. The figures below come from Synology's and QNAP's UK product pages, linked under Sources.

The short version

• Best for most home offices: Synology DS225+. Two bays, Intel Celeron J4125, 2.5GbE and 1GbE ports, up to 6GB of memory.
• Best if you want room to grow: Synology DS425+. Four bays, two M.2 NVMe slots, and RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10 on top of RAID 0 and RAID 1.
• Simplest two-bay option: QNAP TS-233. Two hot-swappable bays, one Gigabit Ethernet port, 2GB of memory that cannot be expanded.
• Before you buy: all three are sold diskless. For the Synology models, check the drive compatibility list first, and plan a copy of the NAS that lives somewhere else.

How the three compare

All figures are the makers' own. Synology's storage figures are "raw" capacity, based on 24TB drives, so what you can use depends on the drives and the RAID setup you choose.

Where to buy in the UK, and your rights

All three picks link to Amazon UK. Make sure the listing is the diskless model, not a bundle with drives. On top of the maker's warranty, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you rights against the retailer if the NAS turns out to be faulty, so you can take a fault up with the shop, not only with Synology or QNAP.

What is a NAS, and do you need one?

A NAS is a box with one or more drive bays and a network port. You plug it into your router, and computers on your network can save files to it, open them from it, or back up to it. It runs its own operating system, which you manage from a web browser or an app: Synology calls its system DSM and QNAP calls its system QTS.

It earns its place when two or more computers need the same files or the same backup destination, or when you would rather keep files at home than in someone's cloud. One laptop and a simple backup? An external drive is usually enough.

A NAS is not a backup by itself

RAID spreads your data across several drives so that one can fail without loss. That is all it does. QNAP puts it bluntly: RAID is not a backup. A corrupted file, a power cut at the wrong moment, a fire or a spilt drink reaches every drive in the box at once, so QNAP advises at least two copies of your data, one of them offsite.

The usual way to put it is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of anything important, on two kinds of storage, one kept away from the building. The NCSC's guide for small organisations makes backing up your data one of its first steps. A NAS in your spare room can be your second copy, never the offsite one.

For that offsite copy, Synology's Hyper Backup can send the NAS's contents to a remote server, an external drive you keep elsewhere, or cloud storage, including Synology's C2 Storage subscription.

How to choose a NAS for a home office

Start with the bays

More bays give you more RAID choices and more room. With two bays, both makers list RAID 0 and RAID 1. The four-bay Synology adds RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10. If you are not sure, a two-bay model is easier to start with. If you know you will be storing a lot, or sharing between several people, look at four bays.

Drives are a separate purchase

All three are sold diskless, and for the Synology pair the choice of drive matters more than it used to. When Synology launched its 2025 Plus models, including the DS225+ and DS425+, it limited full support to its own or certified hard drives, a policy Tom's Hardware reported on at launch and again when it was reversed. DSM 7.3, released on 8 October 2025, lets these models build storage pools on third-party hard drives Synology has not validated, but M.2 storage pools and SSD cache still need drives from its list, and Synology gives only limited support for unlisted drives.

So: update to DSM 7.3 or later before you create storage, and check the current compatibility list for your model before buying drives. QNAP's TS-233 has no such history. We don't recommend specific drives here.

Check the network port

A NAS can never be faster than your network. Both Synology models have a 2.5GbE port, and the QNAP has a single Gigabit port. A 2.5GbE port helps only if your router, switch or computer also supports it. If your office is mostly on Wi-Fi, the wireless connection will usually decide the speed, so use a cable to the NAS where you can.

Look at the processor, memory and software

The Synology models use an Intel processor and can take extra memory. The QNAP uses an ARM processor with fixed memory. For simple file storage and backups, any of them is a reasonable starting point on paper. If you want to run extra apps on the box, read the maker's software page for the app you have in mind first, because we have not tested any of them.

Warranty

Synology gives 3 years, extendable to 5 with Extended Warranty Plus; its UK page for the DS425+ says that plan is only sold in Europe and North America. QNAP gives 2 years as standard. Both sit on top of your Consumer Rights Act rights against the retailer, which don't depend on either warranty.

How to set up a NAS as a backup target

The exact steps depend on the maker, so follow the setup guide that comes with your model. In outline:

1. Install your drives in the bays and connect the NAS to your router with a network cable.
2. Complete the setup in your web browser and choose a RAID option that suits your drive count.
3. Create a shared folder for backups and a separate user for each computer.
4. On Windows, Microsoft says File History can save to a network location, so you can point it at the NAS share. On a Mac, follow Apple's and your NAS maker's instructions for Time Machine.
5. Set up an offsite copy as well, and restore one file to prove it works.

Which is best for you

• One or two people, shared files and computer backups: the Synology DS225+.
• A small team, or files you expect to keep growing: the four-bay Synology DS425+ gives you more bays and more RAID choices.
• A basic two-bay box and a gigabit network is enough: the QNAP TS-233.
• One laptop and a simple backup: you may not need a NAS at all. An external drive can be enough.

More backup and storage guides are in our UK storage guides.

How we chose

We have not tested these NAS models. We picked from the two makers most UK buyers compare, read each one's UK product page for bays, processor, memory, ports, RAID, warranty and box contents, and added the Synology drive policy because it is the most widely reported problem with these two models. We left out drives and anything we could not check on a spec page. We don't show or compare prices.