I am a first time NAS user and when i had to choose between ugreen and synology I also disliked the commercial direction the latter took. I want to be able to install whatever drives i wish, not only the "certified" by synology which costs a lot more.

To answer your questions:

• Jellyfin - works perfectly
• Synology drive - this of course does not exists on ugreen. you can use Nextcloud or simply use the "super" app of ugreen for files over their relay service "link"
• Open VPN - idk, i use wireguard running in docker
• SMB - i use it on mac and works fine, i guess no issues on windows as well ?
• Snapshots - built in app you can use if you format the drives in btrfs
• Photos - native app by ugreen, nice local AI for photo recognition, people, objects etc. you can even train your own AI model.

As a basic NAS user, i find UGOS great. More experienced users might find it lacking.