A 3-bay NAS with RAID 5, 2.5GbE and M.2 cache at its lowest price

Is the QNAP TS-364-8G worth buying? Yes, if you want a compact 3-bay NAS with RAID 5 support, 2.5GbE networking and dual M.2 slots, especially at its current all-time-low price of £625.39. The 4.4/5 rating from 24 reviews suggests most buyers are happy, and the 48% saving versus the £1196.89 RRP makes it far easier to justify than the sticker price implies.

First impressions

The TS-364-8G is aimed at people who want more than a basic two-bay box without moving up to a much larger or more expensive chassis. The headline spec is the 3-bay layout, which matters because it lets you build a RAID 5 array with three disks. That gives you a better balance of usable capacity and fault tolerance than a simple mirrored two-bay setup, while still keeping the footprint desktop-friendly. QNAP also includes 8GB of RAM, which is a meaningful starting point for a NAS that may be running file services, media apps and cache features at the same time.

What the key features actually mean

The 2.5GbE networking is one of the strongest practical upgrades here. QNAP says it can multiply file transfer speeds by 2.5 times while still using existing CAT5e cables, which is attractive if your home network is ready for faster-than-gigabit speeds but you do not want to rewire everything. For large media libraries, VM images or backups, that extra bandwidth is much more useful than a cosmetic spec bump.

The dual M.2 PCIe Gen 3 slots add proper flexibility. You can use them for cache acceleration, SSD storage pools, or even Edge TPU support for AI image recognition. That means the TS-364-8G is not just a hard-drive box; it can be tuned for faster metadata-heavy workloads, snappier app performance, or specialised AI tasks if you expand it that way.

The USB 3.2 Gen 2 port rated at 10Gbps is another practical inclusion for fast external transfers. If you regularly offload camera footage, archives or backups from an external SSD, that port helps avoid the USB bottleneck common on cheaper NAS units.

For media users, the 4K H.264 hardware decoding and real-time transcoding are important. They suggest the unit is designed to handle smooth big-screen playback and on-the-fly format conversion rather than relying purely on software processing. That is useful for Plex-style workloads, although the exact real-world experience will still depend on your media formats and client devices.

Performance and build quality

On paper, the TS-364-8G is well matched to a mixed home-lab or media-server role: three bays for RAID 5, 2.5GbE for faster network throughput, 8GB of RAM for multitasking, and M.2 slots for performance tuning. The combination is stronger than what you get from entry-level two-bay NAS models, where you often have to choose between capacity, redundancy and speed. The desktop form factor also makes it easier to place in a home office or AV cabinet than a rack-oriented system.

The main limitation is that the product data here does not list the exact CPU model, so you should avoid assuming workstation-class performance. The listed features clearly point to a capable mid-range NAS, but this is still a three-bay desktop unit rather than a high-core-count server. If your workload is heavy virtualisation or multiple concurrent transcodes, you would want to check the CPU details before buying.

Is it good value for money?

At £625.39, the TS-364-8G is not cheap, but the value case is much stronger when you compare it to the £1196.89 RRP and the current 48% discount. More importantly, the price is at the all-time low, so this is the rare situation where the timing data supports buying now rather than waiting. Against the Synology DS223J at £179.97, the QNAP is far more expensive, but it is also in a completely different class with RAID 5, 2.5GbE and M.2 expansion. Compared with the Synology DS224+ at £503.72, the QNAP asks for a premium for the third bay and faster networking. The Synology 2-Bay DS224+ at £688.12 is even pricier, which makes the TS-364-8G easier to defend if you want three-bay flexibility specifically.

Who should think twice?

The biggest warning is simple: if you only need basic file sharing and backup, this is overkill. The 3-bay design, M.2 slots and 2.5GbE make sense only if you will actually use them. Also, because there are only 24 reviews and the sales rank is #82609 in category, this is not a mainstream mass-market pick in the way some Synology models are.

The TS-364-8G is best for buyers who want a compact, expandable NAS for RAID 5 storage, faster transfers and media duties, and who value QNAP’s hardware flexibility. If you are after the cheapest possible NAS, or you want the simplest software experience for light home backups, one of the lower-cost Synology options may fit better.