KITGURU SHORTLISTS: THE BEST NAS OF 2024

It may cost almost £3000, but QNAP's TS-1677X-16G 16-Bay NAS is the best we have come across. It boasts a Ryzen 7 1700  CPU alongside 16GB of DDR4 memory, with support for up to 168TB of storage. When you factor in the dual 10Gb Ethernet and excellent QTS software, this really is the NAS of our dreams. It doesn't come cheap, but it has pretty much every feature we could possibly want.

The TVS-1282-i7-64G 12-bay NAS from QNAP is powered by a i7-7700 processor alongside 64GB of DDR4 memory, while it can support up to 96TB of storage. On top of that, there are three PCIe Gen 3 slots, a single x8 and a pair of x4, with support for various add-in cards such as QNAP's QM2 cards, 10GbE networking and 12G SAS expansion cards, or you could even throw in a dedicated graphics card. It's certainly expensive, but it will almost certainly cater to every need a SMB might have.

QNAP makes it three in a row on our top 5, with its TS-877 (TS-877-1700-16G). It's another NAS using a Ryzen processor, while its 6 hard drive bays can offer up to 72TB of HDD space, and there's also room for an additional two 2.5in SSD drives. If you fancy, the spare PCIe x8 slots even supports a range of Nvidia graphics cards. It's another great option for an SMB owner, or even the serious home user.

The latest addition to Synology's popular j range of entry-level home use DiskStation NAS units is the single-bay DS120j, powered by a dual-core processor. What's more, it costs less than £100...

There’s a good degree of future-proofing built into the TVS-872N, as along with its integrated 5/2.5GbE networking support there are a pair of PCIe slots (x16 and x4) and a pair of NVMe M.2 slots supporting 2280 format SSDs for data caching duties. When it comes to USB ports you might be stuck for choice as it comes with USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and USB 3.0 Type-A ports.