Prime Day is just two months old, but Amazon isn't done with its annual sales event. Like in previous years, the retailer is launching a second round of deals, and this is great news if you missed the initial sales event. The second round of Prime Day is scheduled for October and will also be a 48-hour event.
There will be thousands of products on sale, but the ones I’m interested in are home NAS servers. The category has seen a meteoric rise in recent years, and that’s understandable; data needs are increasing, and a NAS offers an easy way to centralize data. While I don’t have details on which NAS enclosures will be on sale during Prime Day (I’ll have that information before the event), I can recommend products to consider.
So if you've been thinking about getting a NAS, or you have one and want to upgrade to a model with better hardware, or you just need a new NAS hard drive, these are the products that should be on your horizon.
ASUSTOR AS5402T
I can use dozens of NAS servers and the ASUSTOR AS5402T It is among the best in its category. The Taiwanese brand did a great job with the hardware; it has a powerful Intel platform with transcoding, 4 GB of RAM and dual 2.5GbE connectivity.
What’s also interesting is that you get four M.2 slots in addition to the two 3.5-inch drive bays, giving you the ability to add fast SSD storage in addition to regular mechanical drives. And while ASUSTOR’s software efforts have been lacking in the past, that’s not the case in 2024. The brand has overhauled its software, and the new ADM interface looks polished and has plenty of great features.
Entering at $369 on AmazonThe AS5402T is a great option on its own, but I estimate the NAS will be 20% off during Prime Day, making it a real bargain.
DS923+ Turntable Station
He DS923+ Turntable Station This is a standout product, and a big part of its appeal isn't the hardware (it doesn't have the best hardware in its segment). The reason the DS923+ outsells its rivals by several magnitudes is the software; the DSM interface is the best you'll find in this industry and it just makes things easy. You have all the software packages you need, the interface is clear, and you get container management, giving the DS923+ a lot of extensibility.
The hardware is pretty decent; the Ryzen platform is fast and features 4GB of RAM and two M.2 slots. The Gigabit Ethernet ports are annoying (I would have liked 2.5GbE instead), but there is a way to add a 10GbE network card. The DS923+ doesn’t have transcoding, but other than that, it’s a phenomenal Plex media server.
The DS923+ is not Exactly affordable at $598but it should drop to $499 during Prime Day, and at that price, there's really no reason to buy any other server in this segment.
DS223j Disk Station
You don't have a NAS yet and you want to see what all the hype is about, so you need something inexpensive. That's where the DS223j Disk Station enters the scene; it is the ideal gateway to the world of home servers and gives you a good idea of what a NAS offers in daily use.
As you might expect, the DS223j doesn’t have the best hardware – the main reason to buy it is to get a feel for the software and all the ways a NAS can be integrated into the home. As such, it’s great for backing up data from multiple connected devices and does a pretty decent job as a media streaming device.
retail at $189The DS223j is an excellent value and is usually available for $159 during Prime Day.
Much more to come
Prime Day is still a month away, so I don't have any details on all of the products that will be on sale. That said, having covered previous sales events, I can say with some confidence that the deals are typically better than those at summer events, so if you've waited until now to upgrade your device, there will be plenty of great deals on servers and storage drives. I'll have a lot more to share on this topic in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
