Making and setting up my own NAS is always an option, but I want to give these little boxes a try. Some of the features are quite nice.
I've narrowed my search down to...
Qnap TS-251 ($313)
Synology DS215 ($400)
Synology BeyondCloud BC214se 2300 ($350)
WD My Cloud EX2100 ($250)
$400 is probably the most I want to spend on an enclosure. That's already 4x as much as I originally planned for this project. I still need hard drives, but I suppose I can live with the ones I have laying around the house for now. I have a few WD Green drives not being used. If I don't buy new hard drives now, I will have to do so later. Those new WD Red and Seagate NAS drives seem more reliable for this setup.
Qnap TS-251 has a lot of bells and whistles. I really like the transcoding and the HDMI output straight from the box. This and the Synology DS-251+ seem to have similar performance, and probably the best I have seen in this price range. Also, this Qnap is able to expand its memory and connect to an expansion bay if I ever want to expand in the future.
Synology DS-215+ does everything really well. This doesn't have all the bells and whistles as the Qnap, but it seems very easy to setup. I like the easy setup because I don't always have the time to troubleshoot if I am busy. Plus, it apparently emulates a good Dropbox service.
Synology BeyondCloud BC214se 2300 doesn't perform as well as the top two, but the setup is incredibly easy. Plus, this already comes with the hard drives. At $350, it is a really good price. The performance may not be as good as the top two, but I am not sure if I would even notice the difference for what I am doing with it. The low price comes with other drawbacks though. Little room for expandability. The box doesn't use NAS hard drives.
WD My Cloud EX2100 doesn't perform as good as the top two, but it's easy to use and cheap. It already does everything I want. I could spend the extra cash on hard drives. Also, it is cheap enough that if I won't feel bad upgrading to something better down the road.
Any other suggestions? Which one would you get? Any other cool little NAS boxes I haven't considered?
If I can't make up my mind, I will just upgrade the router and setup my own NAS.