[zeroflow]

I totally agree with you.

The appeal for me was the "it just works" factor. It's a compact unit and setup was easy. Every self-built solution would either be rather large (factor for me) and more difficult to set up. And I think, that's what has kept Synology alive for so long. It allows entry level users to get into the selfhosting game with the bare minimum you need, especially if transcoding (Plex/Jellyfin) is mentioned.

As an anecdote, I've had exactly this problem when buying my last NAS some time ago. It was DS920+, DS923+ vs. QNAP TS-464. The arguments for QNAP were exactly what you write. Newer chip, 2.5G NICs, PCIe Slot, no NVMe vendor lock-in. So I bought the QNAP unit. And returned it 5 days later, because the UI was that much hot garbage and I did not want to continue using it.

Lately, the UGreen NAS series looks very promising. I'm hearing only good things about their own system AND (except for the smallest 2-bay solution) you can install TrueNAS. It mostly sounds too good to be true. Compact, (rather) powerful and flexible with support for the own OS.

As the next player, with mixed feelings about support, the Minisforum N5 Units also look promising / near perfect. 3x M.2 for Boot+OS, 5 HDD slots and a PCIe low-profile expansion slot.

[ffsm8]

Surprising to read your take

Transcoding was the reason I moved away from Synology. The rest was fine, not great but ... Okay

But there was no way to improve transcoding performance. If a stream lagged, it would always lag. Hence I jumped ship and just made my own

[tracker1]

I now have a mini pc next to my NAS, and leaving my NAS to only file storage chores. That said, I also am running NVidia Shield TV Pro boxes with Kodi for local media and largely don't have to worry about the encoding.

[zeroflow]

I often read that take. Yes, the J4125 was fine for a few easy / low effort transcodes, like 1080p to 720p for mobile streaming.

But I'm with you. The rest is fine, not great, but rather working well enough.

[lobsterthief]

I bought an inexpensive used Mac Mini and attached a standard HDD USB3 enclosure to it with multiple drives. Works great for streaming to any network appliance I want to use.

[bombcar]

I gave up on transcoding and just recoded everything into the format the Apple TV with Infuse wants.

But my “NAS” is ex-lease enterprise server.

[sersi]

I sold my synology for an AOOStar WTR Max. It arrived with an issue (usb4 port didn't work) but replacement was quick and easy. So far, I'm rather happy. Really hesitated with Minisforum.

[Hikikomori]

There's some DIY chassis that are pretty small like Jonsbo n2, great since you can upgrade CPU later on. https://blog.briancmoses.com/2024/11/diy-nas-2025-edition.ht...

Ugreen, aoostar and terramaster are also good alternatives.

[jchw]

I wish transcoding was available on my 1819+. (It isn't.)