Review on 💾 Synology DS920+ DiskStation - 4-Bay NAS (Diskless) with 4GB DDR4 RAM by Rodney Shepherd

Yes, this NAS does a lot more than just Plex server and file server, but that's all I'm using for now. I'll update this review when I start adding significantly more features to the NAS. First, even with a Celeron processor, it has no problem transcoding live 4K video for viewing on other devices via Plex. When transcoding 4K on my iPhone XR, the CPU usage was around 5%. This means that this small NAS will most likely be able to handle multiple 4K transcoding streams simultaneously. probably more limited by network bandwidth than processor power. That's probably because this is a brand new Celeron that came out in Q4 2019. The only thing that really surprised me was the quality of the user interface. It's a web interface, but if you set it to full screen in your browser, it looks (and works) like Linux. They really put a lot of effort into the user interface! Setting things up in the Control Panel has "simple" and "advanced" options so even inexperienced users won't be overwhelmed. With just one click, you can easily add new "packages" (essentially add-ons) to your NAS. Adding Plex is just a click away and you're done. I enabled SSH to better communicate with my Linux servers and was surprised that the software didn't automatically create a home directory for my user account. It's easy to solve, but it was an accident. Tiny. And maybe the only thing that didn't work absolutely perfectly out of the box. Transferring files from my failed 5TB external drive (NTFS format) to the NAS was as simple as plugging the drive into the front USB port. Harbor. The interface figured that out right away and I was able to use File Station to move files exactly where I wanted. more in the future. If I need memory I'll update this review on how easy/difficult it was. Note that the Iron Wolf drives "tick" about every 5 seconds. So if you use this NAS in the bedroom, it might bother you. My NAS is in a closet with other network devices, so I don't hear any noise.