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Aggregate all your media and access it anywhere
8 / 10  Review Rating

Plex is not your typical streaming service. Sure, they have a library of free streaming TV shows and movies. And yes, they have a selection of live TV channels. Plex’s real claim to fame, though, is its media server. With Plex, your library of audio and video files becomes your own personal Netflix.

If you have a hard drive full of ripped DVDs, Plex’s media server may sound like a godsend, but does it deliver the goods? Plex’s offering was unique, so I had to dive in. Journey with me as I explore how well Plex works as a media server and a streaming provider, including its usability, features, and value.

Is Plex Worth It?

Plex is an impressive and feature-rich solution aimed primarily at those who already own a lot of media files. Plex also offers streaming perks aimed at those who don't need its core media server functionality.

Plex: Run your own media server to access your own entertainment — and more

Pros

  • Free version covers most use cases.
  • Very simple to set up and use.
  • Organizes and attaches metadata to all of your video/audio files.
  • Handles most audio/video file formats with ease.
  • Impressive device support.

Cons

  • Free content is mostly older.
  • All free content has ads.
  • The apps can be buggy.

Our Take: For those who want to turn their own media files into streaming content, Plex is the best choice. Those without their own stash of media, however, won't need this service.

What Is Plex?

At its core, Plex is a media server app. What that means is that it will help you host your own online server full of movies, music, and more. This service is aimed primarily at those of us who still have hard drives full of DVD rips and .mp3 files — which makes it a little different from many of the services we cover here on CordCutting.com.

Plex offers a free app and a premium paid subscription called PlexPass. In addition to the core media server features, it offers perks like streamable content.

What You Can Watch on Plex

Calling Plex a streaming service is like calling “The Walking Dead” a show about gunfights: It completely misses the point. I’ll talk about Plex’s free streaming content in a minute, but I want to explain the cooler feature — the Plex media server — first.

Imagine taking all of your ripped DVDs, TV shows, and music, and organizing them into one convenient library that is categorized and searchable. That’s just the start of what Plex does. They pull in all of your audio and video files; automatically attach metadata (name, genre, etc.); and provide a powerful app for watching the content. You can even stream that content to all of your other devices — essentially turning your movie library into your own personal streaming service.

Of course, this works best if you have a ton of movie and TV show files on your computer. But even if you haven’t been obsessively collecting video files as long as I have, you’ll still find things to watch on Plex. When you are ready to grow your Plex library, you could always check out the public domain and other free (legally!) media you could be downloading with BitTorrent. If you really have no interest in hosting your own content, though, you probably want a dedicated streaming service instead of Plex.

Plex has a growing library (20,000+ titles) of their own free video content, just like you might find on a free video service like Pluto TV or Tubi. You’ll find a lot of older or less popular content from Crackle, BBC, MGM, Warner Bros, and Lionsgate. The most recent title I recognized was from five years ago, but I did get the chance to watch “Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” and a couple of episodes of “The Dana Carvey Show.” There’s also a variety of web shows and podcasts to browse, although I don’t see it replacing YouTube or my podcast aggregator anytime soon.

Checking out movies and shows on Plex
Checking out movies and shows on Plex

The live TV options on Plex have also been growing lately, and they were up to 174 channels at the time of this review. We’re not talking about HBO or Fox, but there are a few you might recognize, including Stories by AMC and IFC Film Picks. If you want a soothing relaxation session, there’s also The Bob Ross Channel. All of these channels are ad-supported.

If you have an antenna and a TV tuner, you can also watch over-the-air (OTA) TV with Plex’s paid tier, called Plex Pass. Plex even provides a cloud DVR for recording all of your OTA TV content. That’s a great way to grow your Plex library.

How It Felt to Use Plex

Setting up a media server sounds super complicated, but getting started with Plex couldn’t be simpler. Just download the Plex media server app to whatever device you want to use to hold your new personal streaming empire. You can pick any device, but remember that your media server needs to have access to all your audio and video files. Also, you’ll have access to your content only when the device is turned on. I chose my Windows desktop because it’s already on 24/7. Otherwise, I would probably have used a network-attached storage (NAS) device to save on power consumption.

Setting up a Plex server
Plex's media server function is the most important thing that the service offers.

The Plex media server app walked me through creating my server and populating it with all that audio and video goodness I’ve been accumulating. Just a few clicks redirected it to my movies folder, and my media server was up and running in minutes. I was impressed by how well it handled all kinds of audio and video formats. I feel like I’m always converting files to make them compatible with new software, but Plex just did everything on its own.

The coolest part, though, was waiting for me in the client app. Plex had already attached all kinds of metadata to my media: genre, actors, directors, runtime, and so much more. And all of that information was searchable. I tested out this powerful metadata feature by searching for movies featuring my favorite Spiderman, Tobey Maguire (because with great power, well, you know). Usually, I’d have to cross-reference with IMDb to find that information. This time, though, Plex did the hard work for me, and the results they found were exactly right.

I installed the Plex client app on pretty much every device I had, and the process was incredibly easy across the board. I did notice a few technical glitches when running the app, though. The app on my Fire TV Stick randomly restarts itself at least once every few days. The web app sometimes gets stuck loading a page, requiring me to refresh. Those are minor, but there is one more aggravating issue. I’ve had a few cases where a video fails to resume properly and instead starts from the beginning. It seems to be rare, apparently occurring when the client loses its connection to the server while loading the video.

If you used Plex prior to 2018, prepare for a whole new experience. I was right there in the angry mob when they announced massive changes to their program. Most notably, they effectively killed off channels (also called plugins). I’m not mad anymore, though, since Plex has taken many of the best plugins and made them into Plex features. Picture almost everything you used to be able to do with a plugin — all seamlessly integrated directly into the app.

In case there are any plugins you are still missing, the Plex Unsupported AppStore still works for now, but I’d recommend that only for experienced users. And Plex has made it pretty clear that plugins will be completely killed off in the very near future.

Plex movie details screen
Plex's metadata allows its title information screens to include things like cast and credits, subtitle options, and Rotten Tomatoes scores.

One of my favorite Plex improvements over the past few years is on-demand subtitle search. In all but the rarest cases, Plex is able to automatically find subtitles for movies and TV shows in English and often a handful of other languages. If you’ve ever tried to find, download, and import a subtitle file into a media player, you should immediately recognize how much time and frustration this feature can save. The subtitle search worked with even most of the obscure movies that I threw at it. The only exception was “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” where, for some reason, Plex’s subtitles were so far off that they became text-based spoilers for upcoming scenes.

Plex Features and Streaming Quality

With Plex’s free tier, you can serve up all of your files from a single computer or NAS device. If you want to run multiple media servers on a single account, you’ll need the Plex Pass. In most cases, though, it’s probably easier to just move all of your media files to a central location.

Plex offers optional remote access for your server. If activated, this feature lets you view your content from outside of your local network. With the Plex Pass, you can even download content to your mobile devices for offline viewing.

Plex Streaming Quality

Plex’s live channels are all in full HD. Many of their free movies and TV shows are also in HD. Most of the time, you’ll probably be using Plex to stream your own content. Thus, the streaming quality will depend largely on the video quality of your own files. If you have HD content, you’ll see it in HD. The primary exception is 4K content, which Plex still has a hard time with. It works for some formats on some devices, but Plex will probably downgrade much of your 4K content to 1080p for playback.

You can adjust Plex’s default video quality if you have buffering issues due to a slow internet connection. Plex recently introduced a feature to automatically adjust quality, which I find especially helpful when I’m trying to watch movies on a sketchy mobile data connection.

Plex Platform Support

Plex supports an impressive variety of platforms. The Plex Media Server app can be installed on Windows, Linux, Mac, and NAS devices. That covers essentially every device you might use for video file storage.

The Plex app on iOS
Plex running on iOS.

The client app supports all of the above platforms; smartphones (Android and iOS); streaming devices (Apple TV/tvOS, Chromecast, Fire TV, Android TV, and Roku); Smart TVs; video game systems (PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and NVIDIA Shield); and Facebook Portal. There’s also a web app, so you can run it right in your favorite browser. You can even install Plex on VR devices or stream audio from Plex on Android TV, Sonos, and Amazon Alexa. So yeah, it’s a long list. My Switch is the only device with a screen that I have that can’t run Plex.

Plex Value

If you have a large collection of your own media content, Plex offers an incredibly convenient way to organize it and make it discoverable and playable on all of your devices. It’s hard not to call that a good value when the price tag reads zero dollars. On the other hand, the free content that Plex supplies from their own library just isn’t that great. It’s worth a look, but most viewers will probably move on pretty quickly if you don’t need the service for your own content.

That brings me to the Plex Pass. At $4.99 per month, $39.99 per year, or $119.99 for a lifetime subscription, it’s cheaper than most paid streaming services, but you aren’t really paying for the streaming content. To me, the killer features in Plex Pass are offline viewing and OTA TV with cloud DVR. Some users will find these worth the price, but many will also find that they get everything they need from Plex’s free subscription tier.

Verdict: Should You Get Plex?

It’s hard to compare Plex to other streaming services because Plex is not really a streaming service. If you came here looking for fresh, blockbuster content, you should consider an alternative like on-demand streaming service Max. Plex is not for streamers looking for a way to watch “Stranger Things” or “Loki” — you’ll need a Netflix subscription and a Disney Plus subscription, respectively, for those.

Like Kodi’s media center solution, Plex is for cord-cutters that long for a way to bring new life to their own collection of ripped DVDs, downloaded movies, and other video and audio files. If that sounds like you, then you definitely need to try Plex. And if you tried Plex before 2018, their improved apps and new features like automatic subtitling are worth a return visit.

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15 thoughts on “Plex Review: Plex Servers, Features, Plex Pass, and More

  1. Collin says:

    Sorry this app is not great or even good at all it doesn’t work on my playstation, my android or a iPhone I keep getting error saying I should change my IP in order for it to work you people are lame I’ll stick to Netflix you can’t beat them and you never will

  2. Roy says:

    Runs well on a simple android box I paid £12 for. I am only interested in using it for the free TV streaming it does and it does that fine. Content is a bit dated but there’s lots of it and if you don’t expect the very latest and very best for nothing you won’t be disappointed. Come on folks it’s a free TV streaming service let’s cut them a bit of slack, thank them for providing it free and be a bit grateful.

  3. Joe says:

    The plex people are more interested in putting out the next new feature or application than supporting the existing ones. The clients are buggy and they don’t spend much time fixing bugs. Things linger for years and some are never fixed at all. For instance, the Android app won’t stream music consistently. Also, the clients have issues with audio/video synchronization. I wouldn’t waste your money on a paid subscription to this.

  4. Victor Frazee says:

    It’s great app if you want to be prompted three times with the same username & password to log in then it says ‘Sorry there is a problem with your log in’. Then you delete Plex then reinstall it with a different username and the same issue happened.
    It’s great app if you want to be inundated with so many options that you have to learn and remember what they do.
    It’s great app if you want it to shove crap in your face you in various screens that you find annoying and will never use.
    It’s great app if you want convoluted options that you may not want but cannot delete or hide. Just trying to get it to consistently show all your videos & songs in a list rather than in tile mode is a PITA.
    It’s great app if you want Plex to reset everything back to default, after you’ve spent a lot of time customizing your screens.
    It’s great app if you like it to display stand alone movies in the folders of certain TV Shows that you have all the episodes saved for. But when you view those movies in Windows Explorer they ARE in their own folder.
    I’m going back to my ‘never fails me’ Raspberry Pi with OSMC installed that I simply attach to the back of my flatscreen TV (thru HDMI) 3) with double stick velcro tape and completely controllable with an OSMC proprietary remote control.
    Copy all the various format movies and OSMC play them without an issue.

  5. Ephraim says:

    Plex sucks. Plex has gotten worse and worse since they have tried to expand. I will try emby because plex sucks so bad!!! I have plex on a media server, but the TV in the other room can’t bring up Plex, even when I bring plex server into the foreground. They just get worse and worse. And their Ninjias… Please! When I paid for Plex, these idiots never solved one single issue. Plex sucks, and if you are paying for it, you are an idiot!

  6. Mike says:

    Been a Plex user for years now and have had great success with it. Really designed for streaming your own content, and excels here; the new features for streaming live TV and movies from places like Crackle are less interesting. Streaming movies, music, family videos, etc from the Plex server to iPads and Rokus works like a champ.

  7. Jim says:

    I have to agree with the comments from Victor and Ephraim. I have been trying to use Plex for 11 months and it is constant issues and bugs, with no customer support. Today the “Live Tv & DVR“ that I paid $100 for just disappeared from the app. After an hour trying to find “support” (I.e. only from other users on Forums) I gave up. In 11 months I have had 5 or 6 issues like this.

    If you are tech oriented and enjoy tinkering with software you may enjoy Plex. If you just want to watch tv and video, there have to be better choices. Certainly you should not spend money on Plex.

  8. Walter says:

    I don’t like Plex nearly as much as I used to. The interface makes less sense than it used to.
    When I go to my videos folder, I also see stuff from my TV folder, and movie folder. WTF? Why even have folders if everything gets dumped into one folder.
    If I have five videos in one folder, I want to see those five videos and nothing else. And I only want to see those videos one time each.
    Why must I have 20 channels that I never asked for, and don’t want?
    Half the time, scanning to update a folder does not work.
    I am presently looking for alternatives to Plex.

  9. Axis says:

    Plex requires some hand-holding but most of the problems I am seeing in this thread seem to fall back into the user’s lap. It sounds like things not being configured properly vs. this app doesn’t work and it sucks! I have used Plex for years at home and for outside streaming and it just works. Minor issues will occur (metadata mistakes and whatnot) but as far as library settings go and managing my 1000+ movies and tv it pretty much does what it’s supposed to do. Is it perfect? No. But it does what it’s supposed to do, for me at least, and it does it very well. I run my server on an old Macbook Pro and connect to it and stream 5.1 audio to my main home theatre. My friends connect to it remotely just fine using Firetv and Roku. My Xbox connects to it fine as well. I even use it on my iPhone/iPad with the web interface. No Plex Pass required. Not sure what problems you guys are having but Plex doesn’t suck.

  10. RJ says:

    It would be very helpful if Plex would give a brief description of there programs. It’s very annoying to have to sit in front of your television and select each program to decide whether or not you want to watch it. Life can be so much more simple if the tv guide on Plex just give a simple description of the show!

  11. Sam smith says:

    Just wondering if other have the same problem, the service is awful everything I watch a TV show or a movie it freezes up on the commercial, Tried to watch Burt Reynolds in Hawk froze up on every commercial break that I gave up, then again today tried to watch another movie, froze up twice, I get all the commercial breaks but you really think they could fix this problem I know I can’t be the only one having it, Just an awful program I won’t watch anything again on their app no worth wasting the time.
    I guess free not what we thought it would be

  12. Oingofan says:

    Been using Plex to act as my TV DVR for years…and it has many problems that Plex does not want to fix (look in the Plex forums). If you want to not be frustrated as all hell and have a happy family, I advise you to avoid using Plex as your TV DVR at all costs. Plex has been focusing on everything else except their core…which is serving up your media. Instead, they have been integrating 3rd party services like Tidal, web streaming (Tubi, etc.), video games (old Atari), etc.

  13. donald chump says:

    i have to say this is the worst app on amazon fire, i have yet to make it though one movie or tv show it always freezes up, it so bad if i could deleted it would, it not worth the cost of being free, the worst i never seen am app that freezes up this much, it doesn’t even remember where it left off when you start off, is this just to get your to pay for service, i wouldn’t give them a dollar for it, just a waste of time

  14. Kittie Brock says:

    I have Roku..and interested in the Plex Channels of Mystery Alley that you have on Plex.
    being 70 yrs old not sure of all the jargon or verbal useage applies to.
    So I am asking if I watch only the channels and possibly the movies on Plex what is this going to cost me?

    Also what is Plex Pass exactly do I need to create a password to get in or is my Roku sufficient enough

  15. Steven Holland says:

    I always used to be able to just go to the Plex Website, but now literally today (10/24/22),…it’s like the whole layout changed. I go to click on live tv channels, but i can’t find where to actually get the channels to pull up. They used to have a tab at the top that literally said Live TV and i was BOOM in there. But now it’s like they dont even have the tab at the top….–I have to click on “Free Movies and TV” …then it brings up another page (where i guess i can technically pick some channels, but its not in a “guide view”. so i see where i can click a link where it says, “Tune In Free”. So i click it. so NOW instead of a guide, i get some “featured channels” and link i see to get to a guide is, “view full guide in app”….I DON’T SEE ANYWHERE ELSE TO GET INTO THE GUIDE! LIKE REALLY DEVELOPERS! im so confused and won’t be using this service anymore! im so done with this stupidness!

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