You hit a point in life where you don’t want to constantly fuck with stuff and want something “that just works”. That’s why I switched from a rooted Android to an iPhone (that and features not on Android). I’ve had my Synology for 5 years and it just works. But the biggest draw for me is form factor. I don’t have space for an old ATX tower where all my networking equipment is. The synology just fits right on the shelf just fine. It also does everything I want with backups, docker, etc.

Could I use an old PC and do it all myself? Yup, easily. Is my time and effort worth the savings? Not as much as it used to be.

It's an appliance. You stick it in the back of a closet and you forget about it. There's a company dedicated to providing updates, and reducing interference during upgrades.

So if you just want something to work, having a company that guarantees it just works is very valuable

It is faster to set up, is often fairly easy to configure, and as an appliance it can mostly be "set and forget".

I will never build a custom NAS for my parents or sister, it will just mean that I will be on call for a complicated machine rather than a simple one.