- Xiaomi has launched its first NAS, a dual-base storage solution that comes in three different storage capacities
- The Xiaomi Smart Storage was not planned, but was created by customers eager to have one after a mistaken label indicated it was being designed.
- Xiaomi Smart Storage device attracted 30,000 net orders in its first hour of crowdsourcing
Network-attached storage appears to be the new frontier for Chinese heavyweight Xiaomi, which has come a long way from its roots as a software developer focused on a heavily modified version of Android.
While many of Xiaomi’s moves when it comes to investments and product lines often surprise others given the breadth of its offerings, many of which are unrelated to each other, a NAS drive seems like a relatively timid product line to focus on.
The product sees Xiaomi compete directly in an industry that was previously dominated by Synology, QNAP, Ugreen and Huawei in the region, with users essentially asking it to make their plans a reality.
A ‘happy accident’ for Xiaomi fans
The firm, whose catalog already includes an electric supercar that bothered the Nürburgring, rice cookers, nose hair clippers, electric scooters and the phones that started it all, seems to have stumbled upon the possibility of having its own NAS, now known as ‘Xiaomi Smart Storage’, by pure chance.
The idea came about by accident in May 2025, when a scheme called “10G NAS” appeared in promotional images for the company’s range of network switches. However, Chinese consumers reacted strongly enough that Xiaomi’s ecosystem general manager, Chen Bo, publicly committed to building one, delivering a finished, crowdfunded option about 13 months later.
Xiaomi’s crowdfunded NAS offering comes in 3 different sizes or configurations: the basic 4TB model (¥2,299), the mid-range 8TB model (¥2,899), and the high-end 16TB model (¥4,699). All of these options include the dual-bay Xiaomi Smart Storage with two hard drives of the same size.
The NAS comes quite well equipped, offering USB 3.0, HDMI, a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port and support for 2.5 and 3.5 inch SATA drives, and capable hardware supposedly under the hood (a Realtek RTD1619B, a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 clocked at 1.7 GHz, with 2 GB of DDR3L and 8 GB of eMMC).
Xiaomi seems equally committed on the software side; It also published a companion app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, while offering support for its Mi Home ecosystem app from the start.
This has allowed the company to rack up an impressive 30,000 orders in the first hour the NAS drive was live on its crowdfunding site, as consumers buy into the value of the Xiaomi brand and the promise of the ecosystem alike, even as storage prices continue to rise thanks to AI-focused demand.
