UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus: The Ideal NAS For Photographers?

As creators, we are repeatedly managing huge uncooked libraries and hefty high-resolution video clips. External exhausting drives temporarily develop into litter, and direct-attached garage can restrict flexibility when switching between units. Network Attached Storage (NAS) is the logical subsequent step, however traditionally, high-performance answers with options like 10GbE had been prohibitively dear. Enter the UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus: promising tough {hardware}, content-creator-focused functions, and inexpensive 10GbE connectivity. In this assessment, I examined it to look if it actually delivers for hard inventive workflows.

First Impressions

Right out of the field, the DXP4800 Plus feels cast, with a steel housing and nice business design. UGREEN comprises the whole lot had to get began, even a small screwdriver for the M.2 slots and unusually great CAT 7 Ethernet cables. Those are a considerate contact, particularly since you want respectable cabling to make the most of the 10GbE speeds.

Getting drives put in was once easy. The 4 major 3.5-inch force bays use toolless trays, which simply slide and click on into position. Accessing the M.2 NVMe SSD slots and the RAM slots for upgrades comes to putting off simply two screws at the backside plate—a simple procedure, even for customers who aren’t specifically relaxed poking across the internals of a pc.

The tool setup reflected this ease of use. Connecting to the NAS by the use of a internet browser on my PC was once painless, and crucially, I wasn’t compelled into making a cloud account simply to get issues operating. After putting in place my native administrator account, the device brought about for replace personal tastes and introduced the choice for a cloud login if desired. A handy guide a rough firmware replace and reboot later, the UGOS Pro interface loaded easily, whole with a useful quick-start walkthrough.

The subsequent step was once developing my garage quantity. UGOS Pro gives the crucial RAID choices, together with RAID 5, which gives a just right stability of capability, velocity, and single-drive failure coverage; RAID 6 for much more redundancy; RAID 10 for velocity and mirroring; and JBOD for those who simply wish to mix disks. At 4 bays, deciding between RAID 5 and RAID 6 will have to be sparsely thought to be, specifically within the context of lately’s tens-of-terabytes drives. As at all times, RAID isn’t backup!

You additionally get a call between the Btrfs and Ext4 record programs. I opted for Btrfs, basically as a result of its snapshot functions be offering further coverage towards unintentional record deletion and even ransomware. It’s a precious protection web when coping with consumer paintings or your picture library. Keep in thoughts that the preliminary setup of the garage array takes time, totaling a number of hours in my case with multi-terabyte drives.

Hardware

The DXP4800 Plus packs some severe punch for its class. It’s powered by means of an Intel Pentium Gold 8505 processor, a 12th-gen chip with each functionality and potency cores. This felt noticeably responsive when navigating the interface and dealing with record operations in comparison to many NAS devices on this worth vary that regularly use lower-end Celeron processors. It comes with 8 GB of DDR5 RAM. If you need to run hard programs or a couple of Docker packing containers down the road, you’ll admire that it’s simply expandable as much as 64 GB (with compatibility with quite a lot of DIMMs).

The 4 major SATA bays give a boost to drives as much as 22 TB every recently, taking into consideration huge uncooked capability (suppose 60 TB usable in a RAID 5 setup with 20 TB drives). The inclusion of 2 M.2 NVMe SSD slots is some other unusual perk for content material advent, specifically at this worth level. You can use those for lightning-fast cache to hurry up get right of entry to to steadily used information and even configure them as a separate, high-speed garage quantity easiest for lively video modifying initiatives or picture catalogs. They are complete Gen 4 x4 NVMe slots, which unusually manner even the 10GbE port will be the bottleneck!

Connectivity is the place the DXP4800 Plus truly shines for media paintings. The headline function is the integrated 10GbE port. Moving video information or whole picture libraries over a 10GbE community dramatically cuts down ready time in comparison to same old Gigabit Ethernet. There’s additionally a 2.5GbE port for flexibility and affordability, offering a velocity spice up although you have not upgraded all your community to 10GbE but. On the entrance, you get rapid USB-C and USB-A ports (10 Gbps) and, very comfortably, an SD card reader (SD 3.0). Being ready to pop a card directly from my digicam into the NAS for direct backup or ingest is an engaging workflow enhancement.

UGOS Pro

The DXP4800 Plus runs on UGREEN’s personal working device, UGOS Pro. UGOS Pro is more recent in comparison to the well-established programs from giants like Synology or QNAP. Does it have the sheer quantity of third-party apps the ones platforms be offering? Not but. However, right through my trying out, I discovered the interface blank, intuitive, and solid. The crucial purposes are well-explained, and importantly for safety, connection defaults and community get right of entry to products and services like SMB or AFP are disabled by means of default, letting you allow handiest what you want.

UGREEN has incorporated options in particular concentrated on creators. The AI Photo Album routinely organizes footage by means of spotting faces, items, and scenes, or even gives semantic seek (like in search of “beach photos”). While I nonetheless depend on devoted DAM tool like Lightroom, this integrated group may well be useful for fast surfing or discovering particular photographs, or having access to your individual picture library for such things as telephone footage and circle of relatives snapshots. There also are devoted Video Center and Music Center apps.

In trying out, I discovered the scene reputation function wasn’t specifically robust in comparison to Apple’s Photos AI or Google’s equivalent answers. For example, in a take a look at set of 1,000 footage, with a minimum of 50 animal footage sprinkled right through, it picked out simply 4 as that includes animals. While it is nice this runs on-device, the underlying fashions may just use some tweaking.

Perhaps probably the most robust tool function is the give a boost to for Docker. This opens the door to operating a limiteless array of containerized programs immediately at the NAS, starting from specialised media servers like Plex or Jellyfin to obtain shoppers, building gear, and even choice sync answers. This considerably expands the NAS’s functions past the local apps introduced by means of UGREEN and truly serves to treatment the smaller first-party app library.

UGREEN additionally helps a very easy manner of putting in place faraway get right of entry to the usage of UGREENlink, which lets you attach on your information securely from out of doors your own home community with out complicated router configurations. For extra complex customers, putting in place customized get right of entry to strategies by the use of Docker could also be conceivable.

Performance

So, how does it really feel to in truth use the DXP4800 Plus? In daily record control and navigating the interface, the NAS felt responsive. Transferring huge information over a 2.5GbE community was once considerably sooner and extra responsive-feeling than on my older Gigabit NAS from some other emblem, making duties like backing up an afternoon’s shoot or transferring huge video initiatives a lot much less painful.

While artificial benchmarks would possibly display permutations relying on RAID kind and particular workloads, the sensible revel in was once sure. Sequential learn and write workflows have been maxing out my 2.5GbE connection, whilst even random 4 KB learn and write operations at a queue intensity of 32 carried out properly—even with none NVMe SSDs put in.

If you don’t wish to make the bounce to 10GbE (which has turn into unusually inexpensive), this situation RAID 10 setup with 4 WD Red Pro 4 TB drives simply and constantly hits the real-world bandwidth restrict of 2.5GbE SMB at about 285 MB/s with a mixture of uncooked information and video clips, providing redundancy over single-drive screw ups and more straightforward get right of entry to throughout your units when in comparison to exterior drives or DAS.

Editing video initiatives immediately off the NAS is possible when using M.2 SSD volumes and connecting by the use of 10GbE. For really hard 4K/8K multi-cam edits, native SSD garage continues to be king, however for lots of commonplace inventive duties, the DXP4800 Plus delivers the essential throughput not to constrain your workflow.

Value

This brings us to the core power of the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus: price. Getting a 4-bay NAS with a succesful Pentium-class processor, expandable DDR5 RAM, M.2 NVMe slots, and integrated 10GbE at this worth level is actually spectacular. Competitors regularly fee a vital top class for 10GbE functions or require add-in playing cards. UGREEN additionally merits credit score for supporting quite a lot of third-party drives, fending off the seller lock-in any other NAS producers are transferring against.

Who is that this NAS for? I see it hitting a candy spot for severe photographers, videographers, and small inventive studios who’ve outgrown exterior drives or fundamental NAS devices and want sooner community functionality with out utterly emptying their wallets. It supplies the {hardware} basis for environment friendly fashionable workflows, dealing with huge information and providing room to develop. For photographers basically the usage of it for storing previous shoots and catalogs, even pairing it with a 2.5GbE connection gives a cast functionality uplift over 1GbE merchandise. For videographers or the ones desiring most velocity, pairing it with a 10GbE transfer unlocks its complete possible whilst nonetheless ultimate very inexpensive.

Conclusion

The UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus makes a powerful case for itself within the crowded NAS marketplace, specifically for content material creators. It delivers a very good mixture of robust {hardware}, future-proof connectivity like 10GbE, creator-centric conveniences just like the SD card reader and M.2 slots, and a simple setup procedure.

While the UGOS Pro working device is more recent and its app ecosystem continues to be rising in comparison to the veterans, it treated the entire record operations I threw at it reliably right through trying out, covers the core functionalities properly, and the inclusion of Docker supplies an impressive trail for growth. Given its aggressive worth, the DXP4800 Plus represents improbable price, bringing high-performance networking and powerful options inside achieve for lots of photographers and videographers in a position to noticeably improve their garage recreation. If you might be in search of a succesful, rapid, and versatile NAS that may not cost a fortune, the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus for sure merits your attention.

The DXP4800 Plus is to be had now from B&H.

What I Liked

• Strong price and have variety for a creator-focused NAS

• UGOS is unusually solid and delightful to make use of for a more recent OS

• Clean business design and quiet operation make this great to have in an place of job or studio

• At time of writing, no dealer lock-in for RAM upgrades, drives, and so on.

What Could Be Improved

• AI-centric options, whilst it is great they are run in the community, don’t seem to be as succesful as different choices

• UGOS has a couple of minor problems, like mistranslations, to handle