From passive storage to active execution: NAS is about to enter its next war
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Author | Lin Ke
At 10 a.m. on July 1, Xiaomi Smart Storage officially launched its crowdfunding campaign.
In less than an hour, more than ten thousand people supported it, with the amount raised exceeding 20.67 million yuan, and all versions were sold out.
This is Xiaomi's first entry into the NAS category. After being postponed for more than a year, they finally fulfilled the promise to launch it in 2026.
The product is restrained: dual-bay, does not support Docker and virtual machines, built-in Mijia security chip, access to HyperOS Connect, positioned as a "convenient and efficient all-family storage center."
With three versions from a 4TB crowdfunding price of 2,299 yuan to a 16TB price of 4,699 yuan, factory pre-installed with WD Red drives, ready to use out of the box.
As personal storage develops rapidly, NAS is gradually moving from a niche product to wider scenarios, but what's more noteworthy is its launch timing.
1. Abnormality in the Price Surge
NAND flash is increasing in price. After AI training consumed a large amount of storage capacity, the price impact spread to mechanical hard drives.
A 4TB 5400rpm mechanical hard disk now retails at a starting price of over 1,000 yuan; two may exceed 2,500 yuan.
Logically, a storage price surge should not be a time for NAS sales to boom.
But the reality is the opposite. According to research by Huatai Securities, in the first three quarters of 2025, domestic online NAS sales increased by 51% year-on-year. In 2025, UGREEN's smart storage business related to NAS reached 1.226 billion yuan, up 213% year-on-year.
The market leaders are also shifting.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, UGREEN surpassed Synology and QNAP in 2025, becoming the global leader in consumer NAS shipments and retail sales. Zhi Kongjian took the No. 1 spot in Tmall and JD’s network storage category sales in 2024. Huawei launched its HarmonyOS-powered home storage as early as 2022, and upgraded to HarmonyOS 6 in early 2026.
QYResearch data shows that NAS is still a sizable market: though China's household market size was only 712 million yuan in 2023, it's expected to grow to 9.619 billion yuan by 2030. Huatai Securities believes the global consumer NAS market will see a compound annual growth rate of over 30% from 2026 to 2030.
Storage anxiety is one reason.
The size of phone photos and videos is ballooning, WeChat files are getting bigger, cloud disk annual fees keep rising, and 2TB of iCloud costs 68 yuan/month. Apple's hardware storage pricing for iPhone makes things worse: the 1TB iPhone 17 Pro is priced at 12,999 yuan, while the 256GB starting version is 8,999 yuan; the 4,000-yuan price difference is enough to buy a NAS.
Besides storage anxiety, there are two deeper variables.
One is the awakening of local data security awareness.
Cloud disk speed limits, cloud drive censorship, account bans, privacy leaks—lessons in recent years have made more people realize it's safer to hold important data themselves.
The other is that domestic brands have simultaneously lowered the price and usability barriers of NAS.
UGREEN launched a thousand-yuan four-bay NAS in 2025, selling over ten thousand units in its first month; Zhi Kongjian made their app much simpler than Synology's. NAS has transformed from "a server only programmers can handle" to "a household appliance that's as easy as plugging in a large USB drive," naturally increasing the user base.
Xiaomi entering at this time, the key thing to watch in product definition is its market entry motive.
Currently among domestic phone manufacturers, only Huawei can achieve full-device backups deeply integrated into their phone ecosystem.
Xiaomi's move to NAS, in essence, fills the local storage puzzle piece in the Mijia system. Camera footage is automatically stored to NAS, phone albums synchronized, Xiao Ai voice assistants can access it, HyperOS 3.0 enables whole-device backup—all to lock users’ data sedimentation within the Xiaomi ecosystem.
This is very different from UGREEN and Zhi Kongjian’s approach of turning storage tools into consumer products. UGREEN wants to make NAS a household appliance, whereas Xiaomi’s strategy is to make NAS the storage back-end for the mobile ecosystem.
Both approaches are promoting the popularization of NAS.
2. Easy to Expand Sales, Hard to Make Money
The NAS market is growing, but making money isn't so easy.
UGREEN’s NAS revenue surged by 213% in 2025, and, according to Frost & Sullivan, it's the global leader in both consumer NAS shipments and sales. But this business's gross margin is only 29%, far lower than other product lines like charging or data transmission.
Synology’s average product price is 5,521 yuan, UGREEN’s is 3,165 yuan, Zhi Kongjian’s is 3,342 yuan. The price gap reflects entirely different audiences. Synology targets businesses and professionals, with software ecosystem and high markup; UGREEN and Zhi Kongjian target households, lowering barriers and scaling users.
UGREEN’s four-bay DH4300 Plus, launched in May 2025, brought NAS into the thousand-yuan price range, selling over ten thousand units in its first month. During the 618 shopping festival, it took over 50% of NAS market share on JD.com, and was a double champion in sales volume and turnover across Tmall, JD, and Douyin.
The numbers look great, but we can't ignore that the current NAS market boom is more a result of penetration, not product upgrades.
UGREEN and Zhi Kongjian have succeeded in turning NAS from a geeky tool into a household consumer product, lowering the threshold, simplifying the system, and reducing the price. But the core product functions are still storage, photo albums, and media walls.
In other words, better NAS sales now are the result of selling old functions to new users, not creating new value with new functions.
Huatai Securities believes, in the short term, cost reduction will drive storage demand, while in the long term, NAS's value will depend on its ecosystem and its role as a digital management center.
But getting from short-term to long-term growth can't rely on price wars—NAS must leap from being a "passive warehouse" to an "active system".
That leap may not come from within the NAS industry, but be prompted by an external species.
3. The Invasion of Agent Computers
The traditional core value of NAS is autonomous data control and expandable storage capacity. 24/7 online operation is just an ancillary trait, but it's this trait that's being diluted by another type of device.
In early 2026, OpenClaw led Agents to go viral. Functioning as self-deployed AI assistants, they can run continuously, be remotely controlled via Lark, DingTalk, WeChat, and other tools, and, according to user settings, invoke different large models and tools to proactively push results at the right time.
Consequently, Mac mini enjoyed an unexpected order boom. On social media, more and more AI enthusiasts are using Mac minis as always-on local Agent hosts. For these users, it's a low-power, low-noise, remotely accessible personal server.
An M4 Pro 48GB Mac mini's maximum power consumption is under 140W, and under light loads, it drops to single-digit watts, virtually silent, able to run local models 24/7. It can smoothly run 32B-parameter large models, use external hard drives for storage, and enable encrypted remote access via third-party tools.
After years of hyping AI PCs, the Windows camp failed to cash in on this trend.
The reason is simple: macOS is UNIX-based, with excellent native bash and zsh support. The core job of the AI Agent is to manipulate files, run command-line tools, schedule APIs, and control GUIs.
An Agent is essentially a smart automation script engineer, and macOS is the OS most script engineers find handy. With Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture (CPU and GPU share all memory), a 48GB Mac mini can run local large models, while PC setups with equal memory cost much more, and their power/noise aren't in the same league.
In a sense, Agent computers already cover some of NAS's core functions: always-on, remote access, and data I/O. They even do things NAS can't—run models, scripts, automate workflows, process audio/video, call APIs.
Of course, NAS vendors are also trying to add execution capabilities.
Zhi Kongjian now supports local deployment of DeepSeek, and can run n8n workflow automation via Docker. UGREEN launched the world's first AI NAS with built-in large language model, the iDX series, at CES 2025. Synology has released AI Console 1.2, integrating AI productivity tools for enterprise users.
However, most NAS machines still use low-power chips like N150 or N305, with memory ranging between 4GB and 16GB. Some high-end models are adopting stronger processors like Core Ultra, but overall, NAS's capabilities for model inference remain very limited. Running a tiny 7B model for AI photo classification is one thing—smoothly running a 32B model for complex inference is a whole generation apart.
NAS vendors are working to boost computational power, but Agent computers are naturally powerful. Their starting points differ.
For users, the real dilemma is emerging.
If Agent computers are already always-on, can use external hard drives for storage, can be remotely managed, and can process files, then what is the marginal value in buying a dedicated NAS for storage?
4. The Possibility of Two Paths Converging
Agent computers have their own weaknesses.
SSDs are now standard, yet prices are a key issue: 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs have gone from a little over 300 yuan in 2023 to close to 1,000 yuan in 2026, with top models up to 1,400 yuan—prices have more than doubled in three years.
More crucially, they're not suitable for long-term archiving of large volumes of cold data. A 1TB Mac mini’s local space is quickly filled by model weights, project files, cache, vector databases. Prolonged Agent operation creates a shocking number of intermediary files.
The storage architecture of ordinary computers isn't designed for long-term data management; there's no redundancy, no disk health monitoring, no hot/cold data tiering—disks quickly become a chaotic mess.
NAS has its own weaknesses.
It has storage architecture but lacks execution. Files go in and stay inert. Even though photos and audio can now be auto-organized to some extent, without Agents, NAS’s ability to call on historical materials is still limited. Countless documents are saved, but never truly converted into reusable knowledge.
The NAS knows where files are, but doesn’t know what to do with them. The Agent computer knows what to do, but can’t organize where they are.
So in essence, both are evolving toward the same direction.
NAS is bolstering its computing power. UGREEN’s iDX series integrates LLMs, supports AI semantic search and intelligent classification. Synology’s AI Console for enterprises positions NAS as the database for AI Agents. Some NAS vendors are exploring GPU expansion, trying to narrow the computational gap with Agent computers.
Agent computers are improving storage architecture. Always-on Agent hosts need multiple bays, backups, snapshots, permission management, disk health monitoring, remote access, hot/cold data tiering—all strengths honed by NAS for over a decade.
The resulting hardware form is likely a hybrid of SSD and HDD.
SSD as the workspace for OS, models, cache, vector databases, code projects, Agent directories. HDD as the data pool for photos, raw videos, recordings, historical files, family backups, cold data archives.
In reality, this is a scaled-down, consumer-grade data center. Hot data is executed rapidly; cold data is stored safely.
5. How to Define Always Online
This convergence means very different things for different hardware vendors.
Phone manufacturers making NAS: the core logic is ecosystem closure.
Xiaomi Smart Storage supports HyperOS 3.0 full device backup, up to 360 days camera video storage, Xiao Ai voice control, 16 isolated accounts.
All these features are about making NAS an extension container for phone data, with product definition based on mobile, and user experience focused on apps.
Huawei launched HarmonyOS-powered home storage in 2022 and upgraded to HarmonyOS 6 in early 2026, also following the ecosystem closure route. While these may not become Agent workstations, they can greatly expand the household user base for storage.
Apple hasn't made a NAS, but Mac mini is becoming the de facto local AI server.
Apple Silicon unified memory, low power, UNIX-like OS, MLX inference framework—all naturally fit the continuous operation needs of AI Agents.
Apple doubled down on AI developer tools at WWDC 2025 and 2026, constructing a full-chain AI loop from code writing to project deployment. It doesn't need the NAS label, but in fact handles both NAS and Agent functions.
For native NAS vendors, the choice is trickiest.
Going up means strengthening computing with AI NAS, but mainstream NAS processors still lag far behind the M4 Pro, and it's hard to close that gap in the short term.
Going down means continuing the price war for home consumers, but margins are already thin: UGREEN’s NAS business gross margin of 28.1% isn’t healthy for consumer electronics.
Synology is taking a different path. With deep enterprise roots and product prices over 5,000 yuan, its AI Console targets enterprise data security and compliance. It has ceded the lower price range in the consumer market, but maintains a moat in the business arena.
UGREEN's total 2025 revenue was 9.491 billion yuan, with intelligent storage related to NAS contributing 12.92%. That proportion is rising quickly. But risks are also clear.
UGREEN's annual R&D spending was 438 million yuan, or 4.62% of revenue. For a company that started with charging accessories, this R&D intensity is only average for the consumer electronics industry. If NAS really wants to evolve from a storage tool into an intelligent platform, investment in software and algorithms will likely need to reach a new level.
These three paths may have very different endgames.
Phone brands will make NAS an ecosystem accessory, positioned as a household consumer product. Apple will pursue the Agent workstation direction, making Mac mini a de facto local AI server with more and more NAS functionality. Native NAS vendors are stuck in the middle, needing to defend the storage foundation while breaking through in computing and intelligence.
The result may be several differentiated products at different price points and for different scenarios, but one thing will be common: the device at home or in the office will have to do both storage and execution.
Products like NAS won’t disappear, but a NAS that only stores files is no longer enough.
The stronger AI gets, the more it needs private data. Cloud models can answer public questions, but truly valuable content is always local: photos, videos, contracts, chat logs, interview audio, historical manuscripts, project files, asset libraries. This data can’t be mindlessly put in the cloud, nor left to gather dust on a hard drive.
People need a place to save their data, and a place for AI to work for them. In the past, these were two separate places.
I believe, in the age of Agents, they will merge.
Risk Warning and DisclaimerThe market has risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account an individual's specific investment objectives, financial situation, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article suit their particular situation. Investment based on this article is at your own risk. ```