I love my Synology. I don’t find it complicated or troublesome … the primary downside is cost (and as noted, backup). The primary value of a NAS is that it is a big chuck on storage that is available to multiple users. It your issue is primary needing a lot of storage for one computer then I would likely just go with a direct attached drive. My wife and I both need storage and need to share some files and the NAS solves that problem.
Backup is an issue (although since the NAS uses RAID there is the extra level of protection). I subscribe Office365 which gives us each 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage. So a big part of my backup strategy is to use the Synology Cloud Sync app to sync all of our important folders to OneDrive. Cloud Sync supports several cloud services so this can be a fairly general solution.
The other benefits of the NAS:
- Growth. I have a 5 bay unit with 3 3TB drives right now (that gives me 6TB with RAID). I can add two more drives of any size and I can upgrade my 3TB with bigger ones.
- Other apps. My synology is my VPN Server when I am out of the house. It is a Plex Server for both commercial and personal videos and other media. And there are dozens of other apps.
But there is a price. You have to pay for the drives either way, but the NAS chassis means a few hundred pounds in addition.