Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus

[TheLostSwede]

Ugreen is joining the NAS market with no less than six new storage appliances. We take a closer look at the mid-range NASync DXP4800 Plus model with an Intel Pentium Gold 8505 CPU, 8 GB of DDR5 RAM, 10 Gbps Ethernet and support for dual NVMe drives amongst other impressive features.

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[theglaze]

Thanks for the review. Impressive specs and certainly worth considering at that Kickstarter price point, especially for users with simple NAS requirements who can tolerate immature software and wait for updates.

 

[Mav']

Ty TheLostSwede for this rewiew. One question please, which may arise in all NAS tests, is the fan easily replaceable? I find this to be important and could appear during each NAS test.
Personally if I took a NAS like this, I would look to replace the fan with a noctua. Have a nice week end

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ty TheLostSwede for this rewiew. One question please, which may arise in all NAS tests, is the fan easily replaceable? I find this to be important and could appear during each NAS test.
Personally if I took a NAS like this, I would look to replace the fan with a noctua. Have a nice week end

Easily, well, it's a standard PWM fan with a normal 4-pin fan header. You'd have to take the whole thing apart though, which might not be super easy. I didn't try, but the are some sites that have down a teardown, like these guys

UGREEN NASync DXP4800 PLUS NAS Review

UGREEN NASync DXP4800 PLUS Review (Pre-Release) With many newcomers stepping into the network-attached storage arena, aiming to compete with established giants like Synology and QNAP, UGREEN's entry is one of the most confident I've seen to date. UGREEN, a brand that has existed for quite some time

nascompares.com

Thanks for the review. Impressive specs and certainly worth considering at that Kickstarter price point, especially for users with simple NAS requirements who can tolerate immature software and wait for updates.

The software works fine in general, it just needs some work in some areas. We've passed on quite a bit of feedback to Ugreen. My biggest concern is how the CPU hits 100 degrees at times, before the fan really kicks in. This isn't an expected behaviour.

Some of my complaints are more about Ugreen doing things differently from everyone else and not providing sufficiently clear documentation on the matter. Sometimes you can't get any information about how something works and the device has a built in manual of sorts that automatically goes online if it can't find an answer locally. However, the online help is often not of any use either and sometimes references their Chinese products, which have a different OS and different software.

To be fair though, it's a new product, but as you say, it's not for everyone, but it's also easier to use than many existing alternatives.

 

[TinyRK]

Let's not forget that UGReen will allow the install of other OS like TruNAS. That's where it gets really interesting....

 

[TheLostSwede]

Let's not forget that UGReen will allow the install of other OS like TruNAS. That's where it gets really interesting....

From what I read, it's at least currently, not that easy, as you have about one second to get into the UEFI.
Some other reviewers tried to install a different OS, but couldn't make it work.
However, it's currently loading GRUB on boot, so it should be possible to chose a different OS at that point.
If this will change or not, I don't know.

 

[mechtech]

Whatever happened to ZFS, I thought that was supposed to be a good file system?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Whatever happened to ZFS, I thought that was supposed to be a good file system?

It's also quite CPU heavy and "requires" ECC RAM.

@mechtech To add to this, QNAP only supports EXT4 and claims it's better than Btrfs, unless you pick one of their high-end devices that requires a different operation system that has ZFS support.
Synology doesn't appear to support ZFS at all, only EXT4 and Btrfs.
Asustor and TerraMaster appears to be EXT4 and Btrfs as well.

ZFS is claimed to be superior, yet, due to its generally higher system requirements and potentially some licensing issues, most companies don't appear to be implementing it.
I have never used it, as it simply sounded like something that was beyond my requirements. On my DIY NAS I use EXT4 with mergerfs and SnapRAID.

 

[Easy Rhino]

I don't trust this NAS. It was reviewed by 4 or 5 techtubers on the same day. You know UGREEN is spamming this thing for cheap sales before people figure out it wont last 1 year.

 

[Fietser]

I've just bought and installed a Qnap TS-433. Replacing my old 15 year old Qnap, having no issues with it, all that time, this was the most obvious buy for me.
Seeing this review of the Ugreen nas, it wouldn't have sold me over. It's a little too power hungry and too expensive for my taste.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I don't trust this NAS. It was reviewed by 4 or 5 techtubers on the same day. You know UGREEN is spamming this thing for cheap sales before people figure out it wont last 1 year.

What is there not to trust? Apart from the software that is.

I mean, the issue with the fans are related to the software, as it doesn't spin up early enough when the temperature increases, so the CPU hits it thermal limit and then the fan goes nuts. As you can see, I didn't hold back on my criticism either, but it's by no means a horrible piece of kit. It largely does what it promises. I should confess I didn't try their "cloud service" due to not wanting to set up an account on their server in the PRC, just so I can access the NAS when away from home. That part, I don't trust either.

As for techtubers spamming, well, we're actually quite late with this review, for various reasons and you can find reviews of sorts at at least a dozen or so sites by now, some with more serious testing like TPU than others.

I've just bought and installed a Qnap TS-433. Replacing my old 15 year old Qnap, having no issues with it, all that time, this was the most obvious buy for me.
Seeing this review of the Ugreen nas, it wouldn't have sold me over. It's a little too power hungry and too expensive for my taste.

Well, you have an Arm based NAS, very different user base. You can't expand your RAM, you don't have support for NVMe drives, you're "limited" to 2.5 Gbps Ethernet and so forth.
Yes, you have a much more power efficient device, no doubts about it and I'm guessing QNAP has enough native software for you not needing to run stuff in Docker to get the software features you want? Yes, your NAS supports Docker, but I doubt it does hardware video transcoding, nor do you appear to have an HDMI out for direct video playback.
My point being, different people have different needs and if you're happy with the features you bought, then that's great, but other people have more demanding needs.
Is the DXP4800 Plus perfect? Far from it, but at least for the Kickstarter pricing, it's going to be attractive to a lot of people.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

That's nice it's a 10GBASE-T port and not (stupid) SFP+.....there's zero advantage to SGP+ nowadays, because 10GBASE-T switches and NICs are just as cheap and if you want a home network, you're doing that with CAT6, not fiber or DACs if you're a normal human.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Nice product with marketing W

The Greatest Storage That’s Ever Lived? #Ugreen NAS is the real deal! #tech #ugreennas #ugreennasync

With the latest technology and up to 96TB of storage, this impressive piece of tech has earned my approval! I actually replaced my old NAS with this, and tha...

www.youtube.com

Hope to see global availabllity for it

 

[Wasteland]

It's also quite CPU heavy and "requires" ECC RAM.

Neither of these claims is true of ZFS. The latter claim is a long-standing myth, and the former I guess comes from people trying to run de-duplication? In any event, don't use de-duplication. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.

The lack of ZFS support certainly isn't a deal breaker on a NAS, though. At the kickstarter price point, this thing looks pretty good. At the "retail" price point, I have to wonder why anyone reading this site wouldn't prefer to just build his own.

 

[xSneak]

RAID 5 with 22+ TB drives is scary.

 

[Easy Rhino]

What is there not to trust? Apart from the software that is.

It is a brand new product from a company that sells crappy peripherals. They market hard through techtubers. I do not trust them.

 

[Dr. Dro]

It is a brand new product from a company that sells crappy peripherals. They market hard through techtubers. I do not trust them.

Ugreen's cables are of great quality, at least the few I have. I meant to buy a couple of HDD enclosures from them, but they were much pricier than the ones I got for my anime drives.

Personally if they keep the quality standard I've seen so far I think it's a welcome addition to the market.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Neither of these claims is true of ZFS. The latter claim is a long-standing myth, and the former I guess comes from people trying to run de-duplication? In any event, don't use de-duplication. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.

The lack of ZFS support certainly isn't a deal breaker on a NAS, though. At the kickstarter price point, this thing looks pretty good. At the "retail" price point, I have to wonder why anyone reading this site wouldn't prefer to just build his own.

Well, I wrote "requires" not requires, as I'm aware that it's not a strict requirement, but ask anyone that uses ZFS and they'll tell you that you'll get data rot if you don't use ECC memory.
I just find most of the ZFS community to be very toxic due to them telling everyone that doesn't follow their requirements and idiot or worse.

It is a brand new product from a company that sells crappy peripherals. They market hard through techtubers. I do not trust them.

Crappy? Ugreen has a pretty decent reputation. You're free not to buy their products.

 

[darth_admin]

It's also quite CPU heavy and "requires" ECC RAM.

@mechtech To add to this, QNAP only supports EXT4 and claims it's better than Btrfs, unless you pick one of their high-end devices that requires a different operation system that has ZFS support.
Synology doesn't appear to support ZFS at all, only EXT4 and Btrfs.
Asustor and TerraMaster appears to be EXT4 and Btrfs as well.

ZFS is claimed to be superior, yet, due to its generally higher system requirements and potentially some licensing issues, most companies don't appear to be implementing it.
I have never used it, as it simply sounded like something that was beyond my requirements. On my DIY NAS I use EXT4 with mergerfs and SnapRAID.

Anybody who is serious about data safety is using ECC memory. This NAS is for basic DIY market. That's why manufacturer really doesn't support different OSes. Higher system requirements of ZFS are not a thing as I run Truenas on AMD Opteron X3216 APU, which has one bulldozer core....In fact I run several shares and two VMs as well, never noticed a performance deficit. I am about to build next gen of NAS as I am upgrading network to 10Gb and first thing uder consideration of the new platform is ECC support.

 

[Easy Rhino]

You're free not to buy their products.

Thanks

 

[Chaitanya]

What is there not to trust? Apart from the software that is.

I mean, the issue with the fans are related to the software, as it doesn't spin up early enough when the temperature increases, so the CPU hits it thermal limit and then the fan goes nuts. As you can see, I didn't hold back on my criticism either, but it's by no means a horrible piece of kit. It largely does what it promises. I should confess I didn't try their "cloud service" due to not wanting to set up an account on their server in the PRC, just so I can access the NAS when away from home. That part, I don't trust either.

As for techtubers spamming, well, we're actually quite late with this review, for various reasons and you can find reviews of sorts at at least a dozen or so sites by now, some with more serious testing like TPU than others.

Most of the reviews that I have read or watched(different groups of users) for Ugreen NAS all have similar message regarding software needing a little refinement with hardware being really great for its asking price.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Most of the reviews that I have read or watched(different groups of users) for Ugreen NAS all have similar message regarding software needing a little refinement with hardware being really great for its asking price.

Yeah, it's by no means unusable and Ugreen released an update with Docker support in time for the TPU review, which some others didn't have a chance to test.

Overall it doesn't feel overly unpolished, mostly it's a matter of missing features or missing settings.

Having worked at QNAP, I know what went on there and at least back then, they didn't take potential security issues reported by customers too seriously. This is where Ugreen needs to prove that they can deliver, as a new OS, despite being based on Debian 12, is likely to have some issues.

I also believe Ugreen could make more money by selling these devices without software on them and let people install whatever they like.

 

[Wasteland]

Well, I wrote "requires" not requires, as I'm aware that it's not a strict requirement, but ask anyone that uses ZFS and they'll tell you that you'll get data rot if you don't use ECC memory.
I just find most of the ZFS community to be very toxic due to them telling everyone that doesn't follow their requirements and idiot or worse.


Crappy? Ugreen has a pretty decent reputation. You're free not to buy their products.

Yeah, as far as I can tell, the "ZFS will kill your data if you don't have ECC" meme can be attributed mostly to a single toxic forum admin on (IIRC) the TrueNas site. This guy has been browbeating people, tirelessly, with innumerate analysis for decades. Anyway, the TLR for anyone who's interested is that ECC is always good to have, but ZFS is no more susceptible to data rot than any other file system if you don't have it. ZFS is probably more resilient against memory errors, in fact.

On a home server, ECC is an overblown concern no matter how you slice it, IMO. In thirty years of running non-ECC computers, I've never suffered significant data loss due to memory corruption. Come to think of it, I've never suffered significant data loss due to a failed hard drive, either. You should have backups of anything that's important, anyway. Ideally, ECC would be standard. It's a minor scandal that ECC isn't standard. But anyone who's looking for an affordable home server solution shouldn't feel like he needs to grab an ECC platform. There's way too much gatekeeping and discouragement on tech internet generally, but especially in e.g. the Linux and DIY server spaces.

 

[Nostras]

Honestly these prices seem very suspect to me. Ugreen is not a small company by a long shot so, it's typically more to gauge interest and simply a marketing effort.
But to me the the reported retail price is at least 150$ too much which, to my eyes, only aims to make the kickstarter price look better and heavily capitalize on FOMO.
The only two options I see here is that they're either trying to suck in as many buyers as they can to silently drop or severely diminish software support or that their 700$ asking price is no more than a number they've arbitrarily chosen to increase FOMO which is dropped fast when it comes out.

I sincerely hope it's the latter, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the former.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Honestly these prices seem very suspect to me. Ugreen is not a small company by a long shot so, it's typically more to gauge interest and simply a marketing effort.
But to me the the reported retail price is at least 150$ too much which, to my eyes, only aims to make the kickstarter price look better and heavily capitalize on FOMO.
The only two options I see here is that they're either trying to suck in as many buyers as they can to silently drop or severely diminish software support or that their 700$ asking price is no more than a number they've arbitrarily chosen to increase FOMO which is dropped fast when it comes out.

I sincerely hope it's the latter, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the former.

Not saying you're wrong, but the list price of the CPU is US$193 alone...
Also, if you compare it to products from QNAP, Synology, Asustor and Terramaster, then the MSRP isn't looking so bad.
Keep in mind that they have a range of six devices in china, but they're based on different hardware.

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I honestly don't believe this is a fly by night thing to shift some boxes, it wouldn't be worth it and if that was the case, I don't believe there would've been any software updates during the review time, but so far I've received two software updates, of which one added Docker support.

Obviously Ugreen has a lot to prove here and maybe they'll realise that it'll cost them to much in the long run to support the software, but I can only base the review on what I have seen and the info that's available now. The fact that it's possible to install a different OS, it's not all that bad either which way, at least at the crowdfunding price point.