The Best NAS for Beginners? UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus Hands-On!

If you have a ton of documents and photos and you’re running out of storage on your laptop or phone, or you just need a place to back them up, a NAS is a great solution. If you’ve been intimidated because NASes are complicated, the UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus is the most beginner-friendly NAS you can find.

UGREEN sponsored this video and sent the NASync as part of the sponsorship, and UGREEN reviewed the video before it was posted.

In the box and design

A manual, power brick and cable, a small screwdriver and screws for 2.5-inch drives, two Ethernet cables, and the four-bay NAS. This is the nicest-looking NAS I’ve seen: a solid aluminum case with four 3.5-inch bays, two USB ports and an SD card slot on the front.

The back has a magnetic dust filter, a really nice touch, since most NASes pull air past the drives with no filter at all. That should mean less dust, and a cooler, quieter NAS. There are also 2.5 GbE and 10 GbE ports, three USB ports, and HDMI out.

Specs

A five-core 12th-gen Intel CPU and 8 GB of DDR5, expandable to 64 GB. Up to 112 TB across the four bays and two M.2 slots underneath.

Installing drives is simple: push the bottom of the tray to release it, slide the mount out with the tab, insert the drive, lock it in, and push it back into the bay. Then connect power and Ethernet and press the power button.

Setup

1. After the beep, go to find.ugnas.com in a browser. It finds the NAS on your network; click Connect.
2. Agree to the user agreement, then name the device and set an admin name and secure password.
3. Optionally sign up for a UGREEN Cloud account for remote access (or do it later in Control Panel), choose update preferences, and click Initialize.
4. In Storage Manager, click Create, choose a RAID type (I used the recommended RAID 5 with all four disks), optionally scan the disks, pick the capacity and file system, and confirm.

Shared folders and users

• In File Manager, shared folders are for things other users can access, and personal folders are for your own photos, videos and backups. Click + to create a shared folder.
• Add users in Control Panel → User Management, with an admin or non-admin role, and give them access to the folder.
• Turn on file sharing in Control Panel → File Service → SMB → Enable SMB service.

On the Mac, the NAS may show in the Finder sidebar under Network; double-click it and connect. If not, use Go → Connect to Server and type smb:// and the NAS’s IP address.

Speed

Speeds depend on your Ethernet connection, your computer and the drives. I connected the 10 GbE port directly to my Mac with a Thunderbolt to 10 GbE adapter. (UGREEN also has a USB-C adapter for 1 or 2.5 GbE, or you can use Wi-Fi, though it’ll be slower.)

Copying a video project folder with small and very large files ran at 300–400 MB/s, really great for hard drives, and finished in 2 minutes 36 seconds. With my upload capped around 5 MB/s, the same copy to iCloud or Google Drive would take three or four hours on a good day.

Sharing outside the NAS

Right-click a folder in File Manager → Share. Share with existing NAS users, or send an external link to download directly from the NAS (with UGREEN remote access set up). You can make links expire, require a password, or limit how many times they’re used.

Photos and AI

Turn on the AI tools in the Photos app settings. They run completely on the device, with no internet connection, and never upload your data. You get people recognition, search for objects (like fruit), and text recognition to find photos containing the words you search for. The desktop and mobile apps have the same features and let you share files from your phone.

And more

Automatic computer backups, video playback over HDMI, an app center (like a download manager), Docker, and even full virtual machines with more memory and SSD storage.

Security matters for something holding all your files: UGREEN has two international security certifications, and there’s a built-in security manager with always-on real-time protection and on-demand virus scans.

For me, the most important job is a home for backups of my photos and videos. I’ve lost files before and it’s not fun. World Backup Day is March 31st, a good reminder to have at least one backup of your important files. The video’s links had a 15% discount at the time.

Links

• UGREEN NASync DXP4800 plus (15% OFF)
• UGREEN NASync Series
• UGREEN Official Store
• UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus(CA, 19% OFF until 3/31)
• WD Red Plus Hard Drives
• UGREEN 2.5G ethernet adapter
• 10G Thunderbolt ethernet adapter
• Photos used for testing

In this video

• 0:00 Unbox and hardware
• 1:36 specs and storage capacity
• 2:15 tool-les drive install
• 2:49 initial setup
• 3:28 creating storage pool and volume
• 4:11 crating shared folder
• 5:05 enable SMB
• 5:20 connecting with a Mac
• 6:05 file transfer speed test
• 7:20 sharing files
• 7:58 photos and AI Album Assistant
• 8:40 desktop and mobile apps, access form anywhere
• 8:59 advanced features
• 9:34 world backup day and security