Synology DS225+ Wins ZDNET Recommendation at $360 as NAS Drive Prices Jump 46%

Q: Are we trading personal data control for AI progress as storage costs continue to soar?

Partly yes, but it is more an economic squeeze than an unavoidable trade-off. The reporting shows AI is clearly pushing storage prices higher. Hard-drive prices rose about 46% in the months leading to early 2026, and manufacturers such as Western Digital say hyperscale cloud and AI customers now dominate demand. With a basic two-drive Synology DS225+ setup costing roughly $760, many households will find local storage harder to justify against cloud plans offering 2TB for about $10 a month. That matters for data control because a home NAS gives users more direct authority over where files live, how they are shared, and who can access them. When rising hardware costs push people toward iCloud, Dropbox, or similar services, they are effectively outsourcing more of that control to large providers in exchange for lower upfront cost, convenience, and professionally managed resilience. But the trade is not absolute. A NAS still makes sense for people with large libraries, privacy-sensitive data, or workflows needing fast local access, such as video editing. Even then, experts still recommend a “3-2-1” backup approach, which usually means keeping some offsite or cloud copy. In practice, the realistic model is increasingly “NAS plus cloud,” not one replacing the other. So AI-driven storage inflation is making personal control more expensive, and that does nudge users toward cloud dependence. But it is not forcing a surrender of control so much as raising the price of keeping it.

1 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Jul 20

$360 Synology DS225+ is ZDNET’s pick for home NAS buyers who still need local storage, even though it is no longer a clean replacement for cloud services.
2.5GbE networking, 280 MB/s read speeds and Synology’s DiskStation Manager software drove the recommendation, with the reviewer also citing long security support and flexible SHR disk management.
46% average hard-drive price increases through January 2026 have made NAS economics tougher, pushing a basic two-drive RAID 1 setup to about $760 with two 4TB NAS drives.
Cloud plans from iCloud and Dropbox still offer 2TB for $9.99 a month, and offsite backup needs mean most users should treat a NAS as a NAS-plus-cloud setup.
Synology’s past drive-lock and transcoding controversies still weigh on the market, but the reviewer said the DS225+ remains the strongest option for users prioritizing scale, speed, or privacy.