Pricing a 4-bay NAS by the box alone gets the budget wrong by more than half. Four 10TB NAS drives cost $1,823 on Amazon this month, more than twice the price of the most expensive pick in this guide, so the drives set the real tier and the box is the smaller decision.
We grouped the current 4-bay models into three price tiers and priced each pick empty and with drives, using the cheapest CMR drives sold by Amazon.com. This is desk research from vendor spec sheets and published reviews, not a bench test. Every price and stock line was checked on Amazon on October 19, 2026, and every pick is sold by Amazon.com or the brand’s own Amazon storefront, so a warranty claim goes to someone accountable.
The 4-bay NAS picks by price tier
Each tier holds two picks with a reason to exist. The totals use four WD Red Plus 4TB drives for the small build and four 10TB drives for the large one:
| Tier | Pick | Box | With 4x 4TB | With 4x 10TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $300 to $400 | TerraMaster F4-425 | $365.49 | $1,145.45 | $2,188.49 |
| $300 to $400 | UGREEN DH4300 Plus | $399.99 | $1,179.95 | $2,222.99 |
| $500 to $600 | Synology DS425+ | $579.99 | $1,359.95 | $2,402.99 |
| $500 to $600 | TerraMaster F4-425 Pro | $594.99 | $1,374.95 | $2,417.99 |
| $650 to $800 | UGREEN DXP4800 Plus | $656.99 | $1,436.95 | $2,479.99 |
| $650 to $800 | UGREEN DXP4800 GT | $659.99 | $1,439.95 | $2,482.99 |
Only $294.50 separates the cheapest and dearest boxes here, while moving from 4TB to 10TB drives adds $1,043.04 to any of them. Pick the capacity first, then the tier, and don’t let a cheaper box talk you into drives that fill up in a year.
Drive cost sets the budget
Drive prices are the exposure in 2026, and our storage price audit tracks how far they have moved. The cheapest new CMR drives we found sold by Amazon.com were these:
| Drive | Price each | Four drives | Per TB | RAID 5 usable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD Red Plus 4TB (WD40EFZZ) | $194.99 | $779.96 | $48.75 | 12 TB |
| WD Red Plus 10TB (WD100EFGX) | $455.75 | $1,823.00 | $45.58 | 30 TB |
| WD Red Pro 12TB (WD122KFBX) | $539.99 | $2,159.96 | $45.00 | 36 TB |
Two traps sit outside this table. The WD Red Plus 8TB was only offered by third-party sellers at $437.74 or more, which is $54.72 per TB, worse than the 10TB drive. No new Seagate IronWolf in 8, 10 or 12TB was sold by Amazon.com when we checked, so we left them out of the totals.
Buy CMR drives only, because SMR drives can stall a RAID rebuild; our CMR vs SMR guide explains why. The NAS hard drive rankings track more sizes by price per TB. RAID 5 on four large drives survives one failure, not two, so read the RAIDZ2 drive count breakdown before you commit four 10TB disks to single parity.
The $300 to $400 tier
Backups, photos and file shares are what this tier does well. Neither pick here runs serious VMs, and only the F4-425 has Quick Sync, so decide now whether a media server is part of the plan. On the DH4300 Plus, adding Plex later means buying a second box, because its CPU and RAM can’t be upgraded to fix that.
TerraMaster F4-425: x86 and Quick Sync under $400
Under $400, the F4-425 is the only 4-bay box we found with an x86 CPU and Intel Quick Sync from a vendor that publishes a spec sheet. Its Celeron N5095 handles H.264 and H.265 transcoding at 4K60 per TerraMaster, and the 4 GB of DDR4 sits in one SODIMM slot that takes up to 16 GB.
- Network: one 2.5GbE port.
- Storage: no M.2 slots, so an SSD cache costs a drive bay.
- Power: 33 W reading and writing, 13 W in hibernation, per TerraMaster.
- Warranty: two years.
Know the risks before you buy. We found no independent review of this base model, so the figures above are vendor claims. The N5095 is a 2021 Jasper Lake chip with no AV1 decode. TerraMaster also states that installing another OS will invalidate your warranty, so this is a TOS box for its whole life.
UGREEN DH4300 Plus: the low-power backup box
UGREEN built the DH4300 Plus for low power and a fixed 8 GB of RAM. It has no Quick Sync, so plan for direct play rather than transcoding. It runs an eight-core ARM chip with one 2.5GbE port, and NASCompares measured about 4.7 W idle with no drives installed and 30 to 35 W under load. Its review verdict was that it “delivers value well beyond its price tag.”
Those limits are hard ones: no Quick Sync, no M.2 slot, no VM support and no RAM upgrade. Because it’s ARM, TrueNAS and Unraid are off the table too, which means you live with UGOS and whatever apps UGREEN ships for it. Buy it for Time Machine, phone backups and file shares, and skip it if a Plex server is on the plan. A box that idles this low is cheap to leave on all year, which is the whole point of it.
For DSM in this tier, the Synology DS423 at $349.99 is the option. It has a four-core ARM chip, 2 GB of RAM and two 1GbE ports, so treat it as a file server only.
The $500 to $600 tier
A “NAS under $500” search lands on the edge of this tier, and this is where Docker and media servers become practical. Both picks have enough CPU for a few containers, but they differ on software maturity, and that matters more than benchmark numbers when the box holds your only copy of something.
Synology DS425+: DSM with the fewest surprises
If you want DSM, the most polished NAS software here, the DS425+ is the safe choice. It has a Celeron J4125, 2 GB of RAM plus one slot for a 6 GB maximum, one 1GbE and one 2.5GbE port, two M.2 slots and a three-year warranty. Wirecutter named it the upgrade pick in its NAS guide as of its March 2026 update.
Check two things before you pick it. First, Plex hardware transcoding fails out of the box on the DS425+, and the fix is an unofficial community script. Second, 6 GB is below the TrueNAS 8 GB minimum, so it stays on DSM. NASCompares also found it “can feel constrained and overpriced” next to newer hardware.
TerraMaster F4-425 Pro: the most hardware for the money
TerraMaster puts an eight-core Intel N305, two 5GbE ports and three M.2 slots in the $594.99 F4-425 Pro. Its 8 GB SODIMM goes to 32 GB per TerraMaster. HWBusters tested the N350 version with 16 GB, a $799.99 listing on Amazon, and called it “difficult to argue against” at a promotional $639.99 after measuring about 15 W idle with SSDs only.
HWBusters also flags the software risk: TOS 7 was still marked beta, “not recommended for production environments storing critical data.” The TerraMaster warranty rule on other operating systems applies here as well. If you’ll run Plex or Jellyfin on it, our Plex and Jellyfin NAS guide covers it in more depth.
Two QNAP boxes cost less than both picks. The QNAP TS-462A at $529 has the N5095, two M.2 slots and a three-year warranty, but it launched in July 2026 and has no independent review yet. The QNAP TS-433 at $476.88 is ARM with 4 GB fixed, so it is weak for Docker.
The $650 to $800 tier
Spending this much buys 10GbE and room for VMs. Both picks are UGREEN, because they keep the hardware warranty if you replace the OS, and at this price you should keep that option open. A box you can move to TrueNAS later is a box you won’t have to replace when the vendor app store stops getting updates.
UGREEN DXP4800 Plus: the one most homelabs should buy
Inside the DXP4800 Plus is a Pentium Gold 8505 with Quick Sync, 8 GB of DDR5 that goes to 64 GB, a 10GbE port, a 2.5GbE port and two M.2 slots. KitGuru measured 24.25 W idle with four drives on 2.5GbE.
An exit path is its biggest advantage. UGREEN states that with a third-party system the official hardware warranty policy will remain unchanged, so you can move to TrueNAS or Unraid later. The same page lists compatibility problems from that OS under what the warranty does not cover. Our TrueNAS vs Unraid comparison helps with that choice. Skip it only if you want DSM, or two 10GbE ports.
UGREEN DXP4800 GT: ECC and dual 10GbE
UGREEN swaps Intel for an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 in the GT and adds what the Plus lacks: two 10GbE ports, support for true ECC memory, and U.2 drives in bays one and two. It ships with an 8 GB non-ECC module, so budget for ECC if that is the reason you bought it.
There is no Quick Sync, and we found no confirmation that its Radeon graphics transcode in UGOS or Jellyfin, so treat it as a non-transcoding box. NASCompares told existing DXP4800 Plus and Pro owners not to treat it as “an automatic upgrade unless ECC support, U.2, or dual 10GbE are genuinely needed”, and the same test applies to a new buyer choosing between them.
For DSM in this tier, the Synology DS925+ at $756.49 has a Ryzen V1500B and ECC memory, but no 10GbE slot; our Synology neo+ vs Plus comparison covers its siblings. The UGREEN DXP4800 Pro at $799.99 raises the RAM ceiling to 96 GB, which only VM-heavy buyers need.
Warranty and drive rules that bite later
Vendor rules on drives and operating systems decide what you can do in year three, so compare them before you buy:
| Vendor | Third-party drives | Third-party OS | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Synology (2025 Plus) | HDDs allowed from DSM 7.3 | No documented path | M.2 pools and cache still need listed drives |
| UGREEN | Supported | Warranty unchanged | Problems caused by the third-party OS are not covered |
| TerraMaster | Compatibility list, no lock | Warranty invalidated | Locks you to TOS |
| QNAP TS-462A | Free choice of brands | Not documented | QTS only, no QuTS hero listed |
Synology loosened its rules in DSM 7.3, and its drive compatibility KB now lets 2025 Plus models build storage pools on third-party hard drives. There is still a cost: Synology says its own drives are required for deduplication and compression in DSM 7.4. QNAP says buyers of the TS-462A can freely choose their preferred hard drive brands. If you’re leaving Synology entirely, our Synology alternative guide maps the apps.
Models left out on purpose
Some 4-bay boxes look good on a search page and fail on stock, price or seller:
- The Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen3 is $1,517.99 from a third-party seller, above its $1,299 MSRP.
- The QNAP TS-464 has no new in-stock listing on Amazon US.
- The TerraMaster F4-212 has 2 GB of fixed RAM and one 1GbE port.
- Drive bundles cost more than the parts: a DS925+ with four 4TB IronWolf drives was $2,249, against $1,536.45 for the box and four WD Red Plus 4TB bought separately.
We also left out the Yxk Zero1 Pro at $299.99, an N100 box per its Amazon listing that would undercut the F4-425, because its maker publishes no spec sheet we could check. A self-built box is the other way out of this market. Our DIY vs prebuilt NAS cost comparison prices a DIY 4-bay build against these boxes, power costs included.
Audit checklist before the NAS holds real data
Run these checks once, before you copy anything you can’t replace onto the new NAS:
- Every drive in the pool is CMR, checked against the model number (such as WD40EFZZ), not the listing title.
- The NAS runs the latest firmware before you create the first share.
- The admin page is not reachable from the internet, with no port forward and vendor remote access off unless you use it.
- The admin account is not the default name and has a unique password and two-factor login.
- A second copy of important data exists off the NAS, because RAID survives a dead drive but not deletion or ransomware.
- The NAS sits on a UPS that can signal a clean shutdown; our UPS guide for NAS setups covers the wiring.
- The warranty terms allow the OS you plan to run, which rules out TrueNAS or Unraid on TerraMaster.
If any line fails, fix it before the data goes in. Moving data off a misconfigured NAS later costs more time than any setting on this list.
