Is the TS-253E good for Plex?

It can run Plex and serve files, but the Celeron J6412 has limited transcoding headroom. Direct-play streams work well; heavy 4K transcoding will struggle.

Does it come with drives?

No. The two bays are empty, so budget for two SATA drives. For redundancy, use two matched drives in RAID 1.

What is the difference from the TS-253D?

The TS-253E moves to the Celeron J6412 and 2.5GbE ports, giving faster network throughput than the older gigabit TS-253D. Both are two-bay towers.

How much RAM does it have?

This model ships with 8 GB. That is enough for file sharing, backups and a few containers; heavy virtualization wants more.

Can I connect it directly to a TV?

Yes. It has an HDMI output, so you can attach a display and use QNAP's HD Station apps locally.

Two-bay NAS units usually drop during holiday sales and when a newer model launches. Watch the price history before buying.

QNAP Turbo NAS TS-253E-8G SAN/NAS Storage System

Last price we saw

$639.43at Walmart, last seen Oct 31

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Our take on the QNAP Turbo NAS TS-253E-8G SAN/NAS Storage System

The QNAP TS-253E is a two-bay tower NAS for home and small-office file storage, backups and media serving. It has an Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core processor, 8 GB of RAM and two hot-swappable drive bays that run RAID 0, RAID 1 or JBOD. It also has HDMI output for direct display and two 2.5GbE ports. It is a modest, low-power box rather than a media-transcoding powerhouse. No price was given for this listing, so compare it against other stores before buying.

Best forHome and small-office file sharingRAID 1 mirrored backupsLow-power always-on storage