I've been covering NAS and storage deals for a few years now, and there hasn't been much excitement in this area over the last 12 months. With most manufacturers focusing on managing inventories, we didn't get a lot of deals in 2022.
Thankfully, that's changing for Prime Day 2023; most NAS manufacturers are rolling out enticing deals on their latest products — I already rounded up the best Prime Day NAS deals — and one server I want to highlight is the Synology DiskStation DS723+. I reviewed the DS723+ when it launched earlier this year, and said that the upgraded AMD hardware along with the ability to use an M.2 drive for storage — a feature that has long been in the works — gave it a distinct edge over its predecessors.
The DiskStation DS723+ debuted for $449, but for Prime Day you can get your hands on it for just $359 — a full 20% discount from its launch price. Given the hardware on offer and the fact that the new SMD Ryzen hardware is significantly faster than the Intel Celeron-based DS720+, the DS723+ is a no-brainer if you're in the market for a new NAS server primarily for streaming media over Plex.
The DS723+ is a 2-bay server, and like all other NAS models, it is sold in a diskless verison — you'll need to furnish your own hard drives. There are excellent deals on that front, with an 8TB WD Red Plus drive going for just $122 right now. I've been partial to IronWolf drives, and an 8TB IronWolf drive is on sale for $129 — 26% off its usual price.
The biggest differentiator for the DS723+ is the software; the DiskStation Manager interface delivers a polished design and a smorgasbord of utilities, including the ability to host your own media server, mail and note server, VPN, and so much more. The DS723+ comes with 2GB of RAM out of the box, and that's adequate for media streaming and other daily use cases.
You'll find a native installer for Plex on the DS723+, and setting up the service takes less than ten minutes. The one caveat with the AMD Ryzen R1600 that's powering the DS723+ is that it doesn't have hardware transcoding for Plex, a feature that was a mainstay on earlier Intel-powered models. That said, I haven't found any limitations in this area, and most recent TVs, phones, and tablets shouldn't have any issues playing mainstream media codecs.
If you think two drive bays aren't enough, you should take a look at the DS923+. I'm working on a long-term review for the NAS, but I can share my testing notes — the DS923+ uses the same foundation as the DS723+, but you get 4GB of RAM and four drive bays. The rest of the features are largely identical, and the DS923+ is now on sale for $479 — $120 off its launch price.
