I got a cheap PC from

https://ithacareuse.org/

and run Linux on it. My take is that purpose-based NAS are a matter of "pay a lot more, get a lot less, give up all your control"

I don't use a Synology NAS at all. I use a home-built one.

DS2419+ with a DX1215II expansion unit.

For years I used (and still do) UnRaid but cases with all hotswap bays were difficult to find that fit my needs. At the end of the day I want my NAS to be stupid simple to maintain and Synology (currently) fits that bill.

I am concerned with all the "Synology-branded drive" BS they are pushing and that might influence my next NAS purchase.

I use UnRaid as my "App" server still but Synology is the data layer (just NFS mounts to the UnRaid server).

Synology is expensive (comparatively) but it's been way easier to maintain/manage than my UnRaid servers (I have 3 pro licenses, or whatever the highest tier is/was before they moved to subscriptions). I wanted something that "just worked" and so far Synology has fit that bill.

I have a Synology NAS (DS720+), but it’s just a media and file server.

I just built a new NAS using a raspberry pi5 and radxa SSD expansion hat, using openmediavault on the software side. Fairly painless setup, the kit is barebones but I 3d printed a custom case.

It is surprisingly good! 16gb of RAM so you can host all sorts of goodies, and you arent locked into vendor software. Its also extremely cheap to setup, the SSDs end up being the largest expense.

It does all this while using about a quarter of the power my old Thecus NAS did.

I previously used Synology since 2016 but I'll never buy them again, due to a combination of how poor their hardware options are and how unfriendly their recent policy changes have been.

My next NAS will probably be an NVMe-only computer, lots of options emerging these days with 4 - 6 slots as China has become infatuated with designing small NAS.