You are not including support and ease of use. For the non-technical or those who can be bothered Synology has provided a decent avenue. Speccing, putting together a pc, installing and configuring the software is not a trivial tasks. One would probably have to pay a bit for those services and that is not including and ongoing ability to maintain it. When you take all that into account the price could be considered reasonable. I am against them increasing this sort of drm lockdown. So although they have mostly been alright, this direction they continue to follow is disheartening

BYD safety is just fine for Australian roads. Up until recently most people haven’t felt the need to drive huge gas guzzling tanks that the US call trucks. Regardless they get 5/5 star rating for safety in impacts and safety features. Perhaps you are thinking Great Wall motors? They have had some poorer quality in terms of safety, but have been rapidly improving. BYD has come under fire for living conditions of workers building a Brazilian factory and I would not be entirely surprised of issues in China as well. Having said that, feels a bit disingenuous when America seems all too complicit in exploiting undocumented workers. Don’t worry about competing fairly though, Trump has that ‘fixed’ with all the tariffs.

I prefer exFAT as it’s readable across Mac and windows without any issues

There is one in beta at the moment, so hopefully soon there might be a proper app. Also WhatsApp is a Facebook/meta program, so it is them dragging their feet