There haven't been many Synology deals in the last two years; growing demand and inventory shortages meant the brand could barely meet its order quotas, but the industry has stabilized, and Synology is starting to roll out attractive deals for Black Friday.
The highlight this time around is the DiskStation DS923+, which is now down to just $479 — a $120 discount from its usual selling price of $599. The DS923+ debuted at the start of the year, and the 4-bay NAS has considerable upgrades; it is faster in daily use thanks to Ryzen hardware, you can now use M.2 drives for storage, and while it still retains dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, you can make the switch to 10 Gigabit networking via a $100 add-on.
Anyway, what you need to know is that the DiskStation DS923+ is the best 4-bay Plex NAS you can get at the moment, and the fact that it's finally on sale is a big deal in and of itself. So if you're looking to upgrade your NAS, now is the time to act. The deal is already sold out at Amazon, but it is still live at B&H Photo as well as Newegg.
The switch to Ryzen hardware has a lot of positives; it uses less power and is faster in most day-to-day tasks, but the one issue is that you don't get the ability to transcode Plex content. This isn't a huge limitation as Plex has a direct play option that works incredibly well on most devices, but if you're sharing your Plex library and want hardware transcoding, that's not possible here.
Barring that, the DiskStation DS923+ is phenomenal — it has meaningful upgrades across the board, and Synology has managed to extend its lead on the software front with the introduction of DSM 7.2, its latest OS. I used over a dozen NAS servers this year, and the DS923+ is the model I recommend to anyone that's interested in building a home media server. It ticks all the right boxes, and with the NAS now on sale for $479, this is the best time to pick it up.
If previous sales are any indication, these servers tend to go out of stock pretty fast, and that's particularly true of the DS923+. So if you've been waiting to buy a new NAS, I'd suggest picking it up right now. Need hard drives to go with the NAS? I have you covered:
