I am looking for some opinions of the best desktop NAS (not rackmounted) to run Plex on. I have seen similar articles in forums, but the seem outdated. I’d like some feedback with what is available today. I have looked at the NAS compatibility list, but that doesn’t really provide real world experiences from Plex users.
A friend of mine currently has a Western Digital MyCloud EX4 (Model WDBWWD0120KBK-NESN). It is over 6 yrs old, so you can imagine it is starting show its age performance-wise. Plex is available for it, but it seems to be an out-of-date version, with no update available for that particular model. It also cannot transcode video files because it is not powerful enough.
She wants to be able to run Plex on it to stream her movies. A replacement NAS would need to be able to handle Hardware Transcoding, as some of her media files are old AVI that don’t stream well to modern devices. The device only has to be able to serve 1 (2 at most) streams at any given time. The NAS device’s interface should also be as user friendly as possible. She isn’t completely incompetent around computers, but she also isn’t a tech geek like most of us here.
Personally, I am a Synology guy. I have several rackmounted Synology NAS devices that serve my media to Plex, but I run Plex on a VM on an actual rackmounted server. I was looking at the DS918+ as a solution for her, but I wanted input from others. I would like to try and keep the cost of a replacement NAS device under $600US (without disks). A new DS920+ seems to be in the $550US range. I know Synology typically runs on the expensive side, so I would hate for her to spend that kind of money if there are comparable options that cost less. Also, the DS920+ seems to have an issue with the Intel IHD driver when transcoding (workaround is in the Plex Synology FAQ, though).
So, in short, I am looking for a desktop NAS device that can run Plex, supporting hardware transcoding for 1-2 concurrent streams, and costs $600US or less (without disk). Any opinions/suggestions/reviews would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance!
