Do people still need NAS?

At 10 a.m. on July 1st, Xiaomi's smart storage officially launched a crowdfunding campaign.

In less than an hour, over ten thousand people supported the project, and the amount raised exceeded 20.67 million yuan. All versions were out of stock.

This is Xiaomi's first entry into the NAS category. After a delay of more than a year, it finally fulfilled its promise to launch the product in 2026.

The product is quite conservative. It has a dual - disk bay, does not support Docker and virtual machines, is equipped with a Mi Home security chip, and is connected to HyperOS Connect. It is positioned as a "convenient and efficient family storage center".

There are three versions in total, with the crowdfunding price ranging from 2,299 yuan for the 4TB version to 4,699 yuan for the 16TB version. Western Digital Red hard drives are pre - installed at the factory, and it can be used right out of the box.

In today's era of rapid development of personal storage, NAS is gradually moving from a niche product to more scenarios. However, what is more worthy of attention is its release timing.

01 Anomaly in the Price Hike

The price of NAND flash memory is rising. After AI training consumes a large amount of storage production capacity, the price increase has been passed on to mechanical hard drives.

The retail price of a bare 4TB 5400 RPM mechanical hard drive has reached at least 1,000 yuan, and the price of two such hard drives may exceed 2,500 yuan.

Normally, the period of rising storage prices should not be the window for the growth of NAS sales.

However, the fact is just the opposite. A survey by Huatai Securities shows that in the first three quarters of 2025, the online sales of NAS in China increased by 51% year - on - year. The revenue of Ugreen's NAS - related smart storage business reached 1.226 billion yuan in 2025, a year - on - year increase of 213%.

The leading players in this market are also constantly changing.

According to Frost & Sullivan data, Ugreen surpassed Synology and QNAP in 2025 to become the world's number one in both the shipment volume and retail sales of consumer - grade NAS. ZSpace won the first place in the sales volume of network storage products on Tmall and JD.com in 2024. Huawei launched its home storage product with HarmonyOS as early as 2022 and upgraded it to HarmonyOS 6 in early 2026.

QYResearch data shows that the NAS market is still quite large. Although the domestic household market in China was only 712 million yuan in 2023, it is expected to grow to 9.619 billion yuan by 2030. Huatai Securities believes that the compound annual growth rate of the global consumer - grade NAS market from 2026 to 2030 will exceed 30%.

Storage anxiety is one of the reasons.

The size of photos and videos on mobile phones is increasing, WeChat files are getting larger, and the annual fee for cloud storage is becoming more and more expensive. The monthly fee for a 2TB iCloud plan is as high as 68 yuan. Apple's pricing strategy for iPhone storage hardware has also made the situation worse. The 1TB version of the iPhone 17 Pro is priced at 12,999 yuan, while the starting 256GB version is priced at 8,999 yuan. The price difference of 4,000 yuan is enough to buy a NAS.

In addition to storage anxiety, there are two deeper variables.

One is the awakening of the awareness of local data security.

Lessons learned in recent years, such as cloud storage speed limits, online disk reviews, account bans, and privacy leaks, have made more and more people realize that it is safer to keep important data in their own hands.

The other is that domestic brands have lowered both the price and the usage threshold of NAS.

Ugreen launched a four - disk bay NAS in the 1,000 - yuan price range in 2025, and its sales volume exceeded 10,000 units within a month of its launch. ZSpace has made the App operation much simpler than that of Synology. NAS has changed from a "server that only programmers can handle" to a "household appliance that can be used by simply plugging it in, like a large USB flash drive", and naturally, the user base has increased.

When Xiaomi enters the market at this time, the most noteworthy aspect of its product definition is its motivation for entry.

Currently, among domestic mobile phone manufacturers, only Huawei can achieve full - device backup and deeply integrate with the mobile phone ecosystem.

Xiaomi's entry into the NAS market is essentially to complete the local storage puzzle in the Mi Home ecosystem. Functions such as automatically storing camera recordings on the NAS, synchronizing mobile phone photo albums, voice control with Super Xiaoai, and full - device backup with HyperOS 3.0 are all designed to lock in users' data within the Xiaomi ecosystem.

This is completely different from the path of Ugreen and ZSpace, which start from storage tools to create consumer products. Ugreen's logic is to transform NAS from a programmer's toy into a household appliance, while Xiaomi's logic is to turn NAS into the storage backend of the mobile phone ecosystem.

The two paths have jointly promoted the popularization of the NAS category.

02 Easy to Increase Sales, Difficult to Make Profits

The NAS market is expanding, but it is not easy to make money.

Ugreen's NAS business revenue increased by 213% in 2025. According to Frost & Sullivan data, it has become the world's number one in both the shipment volume and retail sales of consumer - grade NAS. However, the gross profit margin of this business is only 29%, far lower than that of other product lines such as charging and data transmission.

The average price of Synology's products is 5,521 yuan, Ugreen's is 3,165 yuan, and ZSpace's is 3,342 yuan. The price difference reflects completely different target audiences. Synology targets enterprises and professional users, following the software ecosystem and high - premium route. Ugreen and ZSpace target family consumers, following the route of lowering the threshold and increasing the user base.

The four - disk bay DH4300 Plus launched by Ugreen in May 2025 brought NAS into the 1,000 - yuan price range, and its sales volume exceeded 10,000 units within a month of its launch. During the 618 shopping festival, it achieved a market share of over 50% in the NAS category on JD.com and won the sales and revenue championships on Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin.

Although the numbers are impressive, it cannot be ignored that the current prosperity of the NAS market is more due to the penetration rate dividend rather than the product upgrade dividend.

What Ugreen and ZSpace have done right is to transform NAS from a geek tool into a family consumer product by lowering the threshold, simplifying the system, and reducing the price. However, the core functions of the product are still storage, photo album, and audio - visual wall.

In other words, the current good sales of NAS rely on selling old functions to new users rather than creating new value with new functions.

Huatai Securities believes that in the short term, it is optimistic about the growth of storage demand driven by cost reduction, and in the long term, it is optimistic about the ecological construction and the value of the digital management center of NAS.

However, to transition from the short term to the long term, it is impossible to rely on price wars. Instead, it requires a product leap from NAS being a "passive warehouse" to an "active system".

The direction of this leap may not come from within the NAS industry but may be forced by an external species.

03 Invasion of Agent Computers

The core value of NAS in the past was the autonomy and controllability of data and the scalability of storage capacity. Being online 24/7 was just an ancillary attribute of these values, but it is precisely this attribute that is being diluted by another type of device.

In early 2026, OpenClaw led the continuous popularity of Agent. As a self - deployed AI assistant, it can run continuously, be remotely controlled through tools such as Feishu, DingTalk, and WeChat, and call different large models and tools according to user settings, actively pushing results at the right time.

As a result, the Mac mini unexpectedly witnessed a wave of order peaks. On social platforms, more and more AI players are using the Mac mini as a long - term online local Agent host. For this group of users, it is a personal server with low power consumption, low noise, and remote control capabilities.

The maximum power consumption of an M4 Pro 48GB Mac mini does not exceed 140W. During normal light loads, it can be as low as a single - digit wattage and is almost silent. It can run local models 24/7. It has been tested to run a 32B parameter large model smoothly. It can also store data when connected to an external hard drive and achieve encrypted remote access through third - party tools.

The Windows camp, which has been promoting AI PCs for several years, has not benefited from this wave.

The reason is not complicated. macOS has the DNA of UNIX, and it has excellent native support for bash and zsh commands. The core work of an AI Agent is to operate files, call command - line tools, schedule APIs, and control the graphical interface.

An Agent is essentially an intelligent automated script engineer, and macOS is naturally the most convenient operating system for script engineers. Coupled with Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture, where the CPU and GPU share all the memory, running a local large model on a 48GB Mac mini is much more cost - effective than achieving the same video memory scale on a PC. Moreover, the power consumption and noise levels are not in the same league.

In a sense, Agent computers have covered some of the core functions of NAS: long - term online access, remote access, and data storage. Moreover, they can do things that NAS cannot do, such as running models, running scripts, executing automated workflows, processing audio and video, and calling APIs.

NAS manufacturers are also trying to improve their execution capabilities.

ZSpace already supports local deployment of DeepSeek and can run n8n workflow automation through Docker. Ugreen launched the world's first AI NAS iDX series with a built - in large language model at CES 2025. Synology released AI Console 1.2, integrating AI productivity tools for enterprise users.

However, most of the computing power bases of NAS are still low - power processors such as N150 and N305, and the memory is generally between 4GB and 16GB. Some high - end models have started to be equipped with more powerful processors such as Core Ultra, but the overall configuration determines that the ceiling of NAS in model inference is very low. There is a generational gap between being able to run a small 7B model for AI photo album classification and being able to run a 32B model smoothly for complex inference tasks.

NAS manufacturers are working hard to improve their computing power, while Agent computers are born with it. Their starting points are different.

For users, a real dilemma is gradually emerging.

If an Agent computer is already online 24/7, can store data when connected to an external hard drive, and can remotely control and process files, what is the marginal value of buying a separate NAS that only focuses on storage?

04 Possibility of Convergence of Two Routes

Agent computers have their own shortcomings.

Solid - state drives have become a basic configuration, and price is currently the biggest issue. The retail price of a 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD has generally increased from more than 300 yuan in 2023 to around 1,000 yuan in 2026, and high - end models can reach about 1,400 yuan, more than doubling in three years.

More importantly, it is not suitable for long - term archiving of redundant, large - scale cold data. The local space of a 1TB SSD Mac mini will soon be filled with model weights, project files, caches, and vector databases. The number of intermediate products generated by an Agent after long - term operation is astonishing.

The storage architecture of ordinary computers is not designed for long - term data management at all. There is no redundant backup, no hard drive health monitoring, and no cold and hot data stratification. The hard drive will soon become a mess.

NAS also has its own shortcomings.

It has a storage architecture but lacks execution capabilities. Files stored in it are often static. Even though photos and recordings can be automatically organized to some extent, without an Agent, the ability of NAS to call historical data is still limited. A large number of documents are just stored but have not really become reusable experiences.

NAS knows where the files are, but does not know what to do with them. Agent computers know what to do with the files but cannot manage where the files are stored well.

Therefore, the evolution directions of the two are actually highly convergent.

NAS is improving its computing power. Ugreen's iDX series has a built - in large language model, supporting AI semantic search and intelligent classification. Synology is promoting AI Console on the enterprise side, positioning NAS as the data base for AI Agents. Some NAS manufacturers have also started to explore solutions for external GPU expansion, trying to narrow the gap with Agent computers in terms of computing power.

Agent computers are improving their storage architecture. Long - term running Agent hosts need multi - disk bays, backup, snapshots, permission management, hard drive health monitoring, remote access, and cold and hot data stratification. These are exactly the areas that NAS has been working on for more than a decade.

The hardware form after the final integration of the two is most likely a hybrid architecture of SSD and HDD.

The SSD will serve as the workspace, carrying the system, models, caches, vector databases, code projects, and Agent execution directories. The HDD will serve as the data pool, carrying photos, original videos, recordings, historical data, family backups, and cold data archiving.

This is actually a scaled - down consumer - grade data center. Hot data can be executed at high speed, and cold data can be safely stored.

05 How to Define Always Online

This integration means completely different things for different types of hardware manufacturers.

For mobile phone manufacturers to enter the NAS market, the core logic is to create an ecological closed - loop.

Xiaomi's smart storage supports full - device backup with HyperOS 3.0, can store camera recordings from Mi Home cameras for up to 360 days, supports voice control with Super Xiaoai, and has 16 isolated accounts.

These functions are all aimed at turning NAS into an extended container for mobile phone data. The product definition starts from the mobile end, and the user experience revolves around the App.

Huawei launched its home storage product with HarmonyOS as early as 2022 and upgraded it to HarmonyOS 6 in early 2026, following the same ecological closed - loop route. Such products may be difficult to become Agent workstations, but they can increase the user base of home storage.

Apple has not entered the NAS market, but the Mac mini is becoming a de facto local AI server.

Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture, low power consumption, UNIX - like system, and MLX inference framework are naturally suitable for the continuous operation of AI Agents.

Apple has continuously strengthened its AI development toolchain at WWDC in 2025 and 2026, and is building a full - link AI closed - loop from code writing to project deployment. It does not need the NAS category name, but in fact, it undertakes the dual functions of NAS and Agent.

NAS original manufacturers face the most difficult choices.

If they move upmarket, they need to improve their computing power to create AI NAS. However, the computing power gap between mainstream NAS processors and the M4 Pro is significant and difficult to bridge in the short term.

If they move downmarket, they need to continue price wars to target family consumers. However, the gross profit margin is already very low. Ugreen's NAS business has a gross profit margin of 28.1%, which is not considered healthy in the consumer electronics industry.

Synology has taken a different path. It has deep roots in the enterprise market, with an average product price of over 5,000 yuan. Its AI Console targets enterprise data security and AI compliance scenarios. It has given up the price range in the consumer market, but its moat in the enterprise market still exists.

Ugreen's annual revenue in 2025 was 9.491 billion yuan, and its NAS - related smart storage contributed 12.92%. This proportion is still rising rapidly. However,