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I have a Synology 218+ and Plex is currently installed and working. I am considering getting a newer NAS to give increased performance. Right now, I am considering the UGreen 2800 or the Synology 225+. 2 bays is all I need for my home server use, primarily Plex and for photos storage and sharing. It looks like the UGreen machine would be a little more difficult to set up, but it should (according to reviews on their site) work. I would hope the 225+ would give me a bit better performance than what I have now., which is acceptable but not great. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Wayne
The ugreen NAS is NOT supported by Plex just yet, so it would not be a good choice.
The DS225+ does NOT support hardware transcoding, Synology removed that functionality, however, there are hacks available to get that back or so it seems.
Also, you can only use Synology branded drives with the DS225+ and they are usually a bit more expensive than other brands.
You would not be able to swap the drives from your old NAS into the new NAS.
I would probably look at QNAP as your next NAS. They have a few models available.
The QNAP TS-264 has an IntelĀ® CeleronĀ® N5095 4-core/4-thread processor, burst up to 2.9 GHz and it also has a GPU which supports QSV, so it could do some hardware transcoding, and it is supported by Plex.
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Do not purchase a Synology x25+ NAS.
If the 218+ still works fine for storage, consider running Plex on a N100/N150 based mini-PC. They sip power and can transcode 4K media. They are relatively inexpensive, in the neighborhood of $150 USD.
Iāve no experience with UGreen NAS, but the 2800 looks like a nice device. It has a N100 CPU, so it will transcode 4K media. There is no native Plex package for UGreen NAS, so you will have to run Plex in a Docker container (neither good or bad, just fyi).
Regarding Synology NAS
The x25+ devices have a J4125 CPU. It was introduced in 2019 and is no longer manufactured. It is not competitive current CPUs such as the Alder Lake N series (N100, N150, etc.). The N100/N150ās CPU and GPU are much stronger and more capable than the J4125ās.
Synology disabled hardware accelerated transcoding on their x25+ model NAS. They did not include the drivers that allow Plex (or any other app) to access the Intel graphics in the J4125 CPU. People have discovered workarounds. However, there is no guarantee they will still work when Synology issues DSM updates.
Also, starting with their x25+ NAS, Synology requires you to use Synology approved hard drives (Synology Compatibility List). The only drives on the list are Synology branded drives (rebadged Toshiba drives). Using unapproved drives may result in a loss of features such as the ability to create a storage pool (The Crackingdownening: Synology to restrict features on non-branded drives | Ars OpenForum).
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Thanks for the information and the suggestion. You could have just saved me some bucks, not to mention some headaches.
This is what I did when I moved away from Synology 218+ myself a couple years ago.
The newer Synology models donāt really support hardware transcoding (not a big deal if you donāt need it) but more than that their brand seems to be moving away from consumer level customers to small business and enterprise customers. That in and of itself isnāt a bad thing but if you just want something for media management and maybe some home cloud\file backup solutions it might not fit.
I went with a QNAP TS-664. The interface is similar but just a little different and a little more learning curve as some more advanced options are exposed initially that Synology just does for you by default but if youāre used to Synology youāll get used to QNAP. QNAP also has better hardware specs at the same price point as Synology so youāll get that as well as a bit more flexibility (add-on card support on lower end models). This makes it a little more future proof that similarly priced Synology models. I would recommend looking at a 4bay NAS instead of a 2bay NAS only because storage needs change a lot and my past experience with when I needed upgrades, storage changes were more painful an expensive due to the 2bay limitation. I went with 6 because I didnāt want to run into that again (but didnāt fill āem up).
Edit: My TS-664 can transcode 4kHDR\TrueHD w\PGS subs ā1080p\AC3 with subtitle burn-in and doesnāt peg the processor (about 40-60% depending on bitrate). My Syno 218+ couldnāt transcode 1080p w\PGS to have burn-in subs at all. I also get no buffering on 1080p\SSA burn-in but definitely did on Syno 218+ (I usually stuck to 720p\SSA for anime for that reason).
QNAP forums are pretty active - as well as the subreddit - and their support is responsive. Theyāll have lots of "getting startedā advice. My only advice is to go ahead and get 2 M.2 cards in Raid1 to act as your system volume - you load those first and get setup before filling the bays with storage drives - and youāll have a nice and snappy machine with some good redundancy. 
I know Ugreen got a lot of notice with recent changes at Syno pushing people away and Ugreen having decent well priced devices but it might be useful to go with QNAP for more mature experience. Though lots of folks seem to be pretty happy with the hardware spec for the price.
If you hear about security issues or vulnerabilities with QNAP - that was a flub a long time ago that got sorted and isnāt any more of a concern with QNAP today than it is with any other NAS.
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Excellent, helpful information. I donāt know anything about the mini-PC you suggested, but itās worth a look. Thanks for the very helpful reply.
@RelationshipDoc
@FordGuy61 made the excellent suggestion of using your old NAS as a storage device and let a mini-pc do the heavy lifting.
I would also recommend that route as an inexpensive, but very useful alternative to purchasing a new NAS.
Hereās an example of a mini-pc that would do the job:
https://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-12th-alder-lake-n100-mini-pc-nucbox-g2?variant=2fc68da6-f284-4b2f-a598-e5db1dfdf23b
Do shop around though and try to choose the best bang for your buck.
If using Windows on the mini-pc, you can Map a network drive on the mini-pc that links to your Media, shared folder on the NAS, that way you can transfer files to/from the NAS and let Plex access the files on the NAS at the same time.
It is very easy to set up and you donāt need any special tools or knowledge, itās all built into Windows and there is a similar way of doing things if you are using a Linux distro instead of Windows.
I personally do not like Docker. It has itās place, but it does require a working knowledge of Linux in order to configure and use it effectively. It is NOT recommended for beginners, which is why I did not suggest using it.
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I appreciate all these suggestions, and you have given me something to think about that I had not considered before. But I need a bit of an āidiotās guideā to this independent of any particular hardware. If I do use a mini-pc or Mac Mini (Iām firmly in the Mac ecosystem) as my Plex server, how do I connect my NAS, where the media files are stored, to the mini-pc? Right now, my server is connected to the router so it serves the whole network. Iām not sure where or how to add this extra bit of hardware.
Connect the mini-PC to the router by an Ethernet cable.
Plex Media Server on the PC will read the files on the NAS and stream them to the clients over the network.
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To add to FordGuy61 notesā¦ If you use a Mac mini youāll āmountā a network drive using SMB.
What this means is youāll setup a folder on your NAS to be a āShareā and you can add that Shared folder as a connected network drive on your computer. Rather than accessing the NAS via a web page to manage and upload\download files youāll do it directly from a āmounted network driveā and itāll act similarly to say a USB drive you plugged in.
Hereās a good article about doing that from your Mac: https://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-access-servers-network-shares-and-remote-drives-in-finder-on-mac/
On your Synology youāll use SMB (typically) service to setup the share. Here is a guide for that: Create a Shared Folder | DSM - Synology Knowledge Center (that guide is for Synology OS 7, if youāre still on Synology OS 6 thereās a little dropdown in the upper left to flip it).
Essentially, once you setup an SMB network share to your video files on Synology, youāll mount\add that drive\share to your Mac. Then you point Plex, running on your Mac, at that share drive when you setup your library. You might be able to migrate your Plex server to keep your old history and metadata but thatās a more involved thing to cover (might search around for that).
Edit: I you use a mini-pic or NUC or something other than a Mac the setup is all functionally the same (SMB share and mount the drive) itās just different steps for different operating systems to perform that function.
mini s12 pro is probably the most used cheap mini pc for plex server. they have released some new models but i think the s12 pro is still probably the most used and have the most resources for figuring out how to set it up. put ubunutu on it. follow some guides. its not too difficult.
I have a S12 Pro and it is great. Ubuntu server running on it (no wasted memory for GUI). In this configuration, 8GB is plenty (Most NAS machines are also 8GB max).
Okay, that makes sense. So both the NAS and the mini-pc/Mac Mini will be connected directly to the router, and I can just connect from the Plex server to the NAS to access media files exactly as I connect from my MacBook Pro to the NAS to upload/view my photos. If I have it right, that should be easy enough.
Yes.
If you run Linux on the mini-PC youāll want to use NFS file sharing instead of SMB. The basics are the same, just some different options to enable on the Synology and how you configure Linux versus Windows or a Mac.
Thereās plenty of people on the forum to help if you get stuck somewhere.
Thanks for the information
The Beelink Mini S12 Pro that ChuckPA has sounds interesting.
Iāve been shopping for something to replace my QNAP while reading
Are there any other good sites I should have on my radar?
