New to NAS - Upgrading from a Dying Deobo

[Enquiries]

I've been running Plex on a Mac Mini for some years now. (I currently have an M1 Mac Mini). I bought a Drobo YEARs ago, and have occasionally added or upgraded HDs, but not in some time, and currently have 12 TB in drives installed. One of the drives is failing and I think it's time to stop being lazy and upgrade to NAS. I've been reading reviews of the Qnap TS-264-8G and came across your site, which seems useful, thorough and, as far as I can tell, not particularly biased.

Despite many years of Drobo use (two of the drives are at least 10 years old), and time figuring out Plex, I've been slow and lazy when it comes to NAS. But I think now is as good a time as any to make the move. I was thinking of using the TS-264-8G and adding two Seagate 8TB drives that I found on the QNAP compatibility list. Before I purchased anything I thought it made sense to get your thoughts, as I expect I'll be spending a lot of time at your site trying to set the thing up and working out bugs. Thanks.

[ed]

The QNAP TS-264-8G will work perfectly for local use, even for streaming 4K content, as long as you're not exceeding its transcoding capabilities. It should handle local 4K playback without issues, especially for direct play or if transcoding is minimal. However, if you plan to access your Plex library remotely and need to transcode 4K content, you might experience some limitations on the TS-264.

For remote 4K access with transcoding, I’d recommend looking into the QNAP TS-73A or TS-74 series, as these models allow for GPU card upgrades, which will significantly improve transcoding performance and support higher-quality streams when accessing content remotely.

If your primary use is local playback, the TS-264 is a solid choice, but for future-proofing or remote transcoding, the TS-73A or TS-74 will give you that extra power when needed.