4-bay NAS decision

[Enquiries]

Hello Robbie, I hope you’re doing well!

I’m looking to purchase a 4-bay NAS and am deciding between the Synology DS923+ and DS423+. I am a medium-advanced home user, and my primary use cases are file storage/backup and running a PLEX server for movies. Most of the data will be accessed locally, with occasional remote access. Movies will mainly be streamed via PLEX via Apple TV at home, occasionally remotely.

What I’m unclear about is whether e.g. MKV video files played by PLEX in Apple TV require on-device decoding, in which case I’d lean towards the DS423+ for its CPU, or if they don’t, making the DS923+ (or DS925+ !) a better choice for overall performance.

I’d really appreciate your insights on this. Thanks in advance for your help!

Kind regards,
Jan

[ed]

Great question—and you're right to consider this carefully. Since you're primarily streaming locally to Apple TV (which supports native decoding of most MKV and H.265 formats), you typically don’t need the NAS to handle transcoding. That makes the DS923+ (or the upcoming DS925+) a solid choice thanks to its expandability and better overall performance for tasks beyond Plex. However, if you anticipate needing remote transcoding often, the DS423+ with its Intel CPU and integrated graphics would give you better hardware transcoding support out of the box.