After a hiatus on NAS reviews, it's nice to start reviewing these type of products again and to start off with a new player in a not overly crowded market. Ugreen has without a doubt done a great job when it comes to the hardware design and the company is bringing something different to what is a bit of a stagnated market where all the major Asian players are largely all coming out of QNAP at one point or another in time. We honestly can't knock the overall build quality, despite our unit having some weird temperature issues at times, but we'll give Ugreen the benefit of the doubt and chalk that down to this being a pre-production unit, as no other review we've seen has made a mention of this. Feature wise, Ugreen is also ahead of the competition in many ways and the fact that the NASync DXP4800 Plus comes with 10 Gbps Ethernet is a big plus in our book, and for those that don't need the extra speed, there's the lower-end DXP4800, even though it also has a less powerful CPU.

On the software side, Ugreen has some work to do, but the starting point of UGOS Pro delivers a user-friendly NAS operating system that even less techy people should be able to get to grips with. It has some quirks that make it differ from other NAS operating systems, for example that it lacks an interface for shared folders which is par for the course from all other manufacturers, as well as more advanced, desirable features such as iSCSI. On the other hand there's no legacy luggage here and Ugreen started fresh and built UGOS Pro on a recent, long term support Linux kernel, which suggests that the company is trying to deliver an operating system for the long term. It's far from what many would call feature complete today, but at the same time, not everyone needs all the features that are offered by older players in the business. With Docker support there's also the potential of using software that might not otherwise have been offered by Ugreen, and we've seen the same for the last couple of years from the established brands. That said, Ugreen could do with having native support for some more software, but hopefully the company is just waiting on feedback from its crowdfunding backers to figure out what software is in demand and which direction to go.

It's impossible to fit everything that a modern NAS can do into a single review these days and a lot depends on specific needs and requirements by the user. We've tried to provide a broad overview of an entirely new NAS operating system, and we're hoping that Ugreen will provide an online simulator/emulator that allows potential customers to try out their OS before buying, much like the other NAS makers do today, as it's the only simple way to figure out if the product is for you or not. Overall, Ugreen has done a good enough job for most users, but we know that not everyone will be satisfied with what's on offer.

Performance wise the NASync DXP4800 Plus has a lot of potential, but it seems like Ugreen needs to do some further software optimization, as while we could see that the NASync DXP4800 Plus is capable of delivering good performance in some tests, it wasn't delivering consistent performance across the board. There are generally some tradeoffs to be had for NAS units, but there were some specific oddities here, for example; RAID 1 performing better than RAID 0 in the occasional test, which isn't at all what's expected. The hardware itself should be more than potent enough to handle mechanical drive reads and writes without any slowdowns due to the choice of RAID mode. That said, the performance wasn't so underwhelming that it would be a problem, but there were instances where we simply didn't see the expected performance from what is a rather powerful piece of hardware, especially with the drives configured as a RAID 0 array.

Going down the DIY route might suit some, whereas a pre-built and mostly pre-configured NAS like this will suit others. One thing that might end up being unique with the Ugreen series of NASync devices is that the company is considering opening them up to third party operating systems, something none of their competitors allow, and this would really make Ugreen stand out from the competition. It's not set in stone yet, but Ugreen has posted on its Kickstarter campaign that the company isn't actively blocking third-party operating systems from being installed. However, Ugreen is by no means offering any kind of support if a customer decides to go ahead with installing a different operating system. That said, the hardware warranty won't be null and void if a third-party OS is installed.

With a current Kickstarter price of US$454, the NASync DXP4800 Pro is unbeatable in terms of value for money, despite some shortcomings. At its US$700 MSRP it's not quite the same bargain, but still competitively priced based on the hardware you get for the money. As we've pointed out, the software isn't quite there today, even though it's more than good enough for a brand new NAS operating system, so this is where you have to decide if it's good enough for your requirements or not, before splashing out on a Ugreen NAS. Overall, we think Ugreen has done a great job with the NASync family of products, especially considering it's their first range of NAS appliances and the company has managed to deliver a lot of features that few of, if any of their competitors can match at the price point.