Help Finding a NAS

[MHauser0901]

I am looking into trying to buy my husband a NAS for Christmas this year as a surprise.  I've tried researching and I am having a difficult time trying to choose one that will have the ability to run 4K videos smoothly.  He mainly wants it to store his favorite shows and he did mention wanting to use plex as well.  I was going to purchase a DS1821+ however I do not know if that is overkill for the purposes that we intend to use it for.  I would like something like is user friendly which is why I was going to go with synology and preferably one that we will be able to use for the foreseeable future.  They seem to have excellent reviews as far as that goes.  My budget is around $1000.  I would like to stay within that range as I know I will have to by drives for the bays.  If someone could give me suggestions on a model or what I should look for I would appreciate it.  

[IkeaGnome]

While I won't be good at recommending specific NAS for this, here's a couple follow up questions that will probably be asked.

How many drives do you want to stick with? How many TB of usable storage would you like?

[Dedayog]

Have you thought about just using a Windows PC for this?  File Server and Plex Server in one.

 

 

[MHauser0901]

I have considered that, but I would like something that is relatively user friendly and to be honest I really don't want to have the hassle of building one.  I just want something that is for the most part plug and go.  That and the fact that I know very little as far as that goes.

[DexterSmythe]

A Synology NAS would probably be a good option in that case. This site might help you pick a model. https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/nas_selector

[jaslion]

With videos do you mean you open the videofile from a file browser and make the machine play it or do you want something like a plex server that encodes the video for you?

 

If the second then yeah this is gonna cost you A TON of money if you go off the shelf as you will need a nas with good performance and those are expensive as hell.

 

If you want user friendly diy. Just follow one of the many diy nas build guides that user freenas/truenas and call it a day. You'll end up with a FAR more performant higher quality machine with a couple hours extra work of building and setting it up.

[MonkeyBomb]

I have the 1821+ and it's been flawless, I bought it about a year ago.

 

8 x 16TB drives, runs my plex server just fine.  I just make sure that anyone that is using it has their Plex clients set to play original quality so transcoding is kept to a minimum.