UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus: The Ideal NAS For Photographers?

As creators, we're constantly managing massive raw libraries and hefty high-resolution video clips. External hard drives quickly turn into clutter, and direct-attached storage can limit flexibility when switching between devices. Network Attached Storage (NAS) is the logical next step, but historically, high-performance solutions with features like 10GbE have been prohibitively expensive. Enter the UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus: promising robust hardware, content-creator-focused capabilities, and affordable 10GbE connectivity. In this review, I tested it to see if it genuinely delivers for demanding creative workflows.

First Impressions

Right out of the box, the DXP4800 Plus feels solid, with a metal housing and great industrial design. UGREEN includes everything needed to get started, even a small screwdriver for the M.2 slots and surprisingly nice CAT 7 Ethernet cables. Those are a thoughtful touch, especially since you need decent cabling to take advantage of the 10GbE speeds.

Getting drives installed was simple. The four main 3.5-inch drive bays use toolless trays, which just slide and click into place. Accessing the M.2 NVMe SSD slots and the RAM slots for upgrades involves removing just two screws on the bottom plate—a straightforward process, even for users who aren’t particularly comfortable poking around the internals of a computer.

The software setup mirrored this ease of use. Connecting to the NAS via a web browser on my PC was painless, and crucially, I wasn't forced into creating a cloud account just to get things running. After setting up my local administrator account, the system prompted for update preferences and offered the option for a cloud login if desired. A quick firmware update and reboot later, the UGOS Pro interface loaded smoothly, complete with a helpful quick-start walkthrough.

The next step was creating my storage volume. UGOS Pro offers the essential RAID options, including RAID 5, which offers a good balance of capacity, speed, and single-drive failure protection; RAID 6 for even more redundancy; RAID 10 for speed and mirroring; and JBOD if you just want to combine disks. At 4 bays, deciding between RAID 5 and RAID 6 should be carefully considered, particularly in the context of today’s tens-of-terabytes drives. As always, RAID isn’t backup!

You also get a choice between the Btrfs and Ext4 file systems. I opted for Btrfs, primarily because its snapshot capabilities offer additional protection against accidental file deletion or even ransomware. It’s a valuable safety net when dealing with client work or your photo library. Keep in mind that the initial setup of the storage array takes time, totaling several hours in my case with multi-terabyte drives.

Hardware

The DXP4800 Plus packs some serious punch for its category. It’s powered by an Intel Pentium Gold 8505 processor, a 12th-gen chip with both performance and efficiency cores. This felt noticeably responsive when navigating the interface and handling file operations compared to many NAS units in this price range that often use lower-end Celeron processors. It comes with 8 GB of DDR5 RAM. If you want to run demanding applications or multiple Docker containers down the line, you’ll appreciate that it’s easily expandable up to 64 GB (with compatibility with a wide range of DIMMs).

The four main SATA bays support drives up to 22 TB each currently, allowing for massive raw capacity (think 60 TB usable in a RAID 5 setup with 20 TB drives). The inclusion of two M.2 NVMe SSD slots is another uncommon perk for content creation, particularly at this price point. You can use these for lightning-fast cache to speed up access to frequently used files or even configure them as a separate, high-speed storage volume perfect for active video editing projects or photo catalogs. They are full Gen 4 x4 NVMe slots, which surprisingly means even the 10GbE port would be the bottleneck!

Connectivity is where the DXP4800 Plus really shines for media work. The headline feature is the built-in 10GbE port. Moving video files or entire photo libraries over a 10GbE network dramatically cuts down waiting time compared to standard Gigabit Ethernet. There's also a 2.5GbE port for flexibility and affordability, providing a speed boost even if you haven't upgraded your entire network to 10GbE yet. On the front, you get fast USB-C and USB-A ports (10 Gbps) and, very conveniently, an SD card reader (SD 3.0). Being able to pop a card straight from my camera into the NAS for direct backup or ingest is an interesting workflow enhancement.

UGOS Pro

The DXP4800 Plus runs on UGREEN's own operating system, UGOS Pro. UGOS Pro is newer compared to the well-established systems from giants like Synology or QNAP. Does it have the sheer volume of third-party apps those platforms offer? Not yet. However, during my testing, I found the interface clean, intuitive, and stable. The essential functions are well-explained, and importantly for security, connection defaults and network access services like SMB or AFP are disabled by default, letting you enable only what you need.

UGREEN has included features specifically targeting creators. The AI Photo Album automatically organizes photos by recognizing faces, objects, and scenes, and even offers semantic search (like searching for "beach photos"). While I still rely on dedicated DAM software like Lightroom, this built-in organization could be helpful for quick browsing or finding specific shots, or accessing your personal photo library for things like phone photos and family snapshots. There are also dedicated Video Center and Music Center apps.

In testing, I found the scene recognition feature wasn't particularly powerful compared to Apple's Photos AI or Google's similar solutions. For instance, in a test set of 1,000 photos, with at least 50 animal photos sprinkled throughout, it picked out just 4 as featuring animals. While it's great this runs on-device, the underlying models could use some tweaking.

Perhaps the most powerful software feature is the support for Docker. This opens the door to running a vast array of containerized applications directly on the NAS, ranging from specialized media servers like Plex or Jellyfin to download clients, development tools, or even alternative sync solutions. This significantly expands the NAS's capabilities beyond the native apps offered by UGREEN and really serves to remedy the smaller first-party app library.

UGREEN also supports an easy method of setting up remote access using UGREENlink, which allows you to connect to your files securely from outside your home network without complex router configurations. For more advanced users, setting up custom access methods via Docker is also possible.

Performance

So, how does it feel to actually use the DXP4800 Plus? In day-to-day file management and navigating the interface, the NAS felt responsive. Transferring large files over a 2.5GbE network was significantly faster and more responsive-feeling than on my older Gigabit NAS from another brand, making tasks like backing up a day's shoot or moving large video projects much less painful.

While synthetic benchmarks might show variations depending on RAID type and specific workloads, the practical experience was positive. Sequential read and write workflows were maxing out my 2.5GbE connection, while even random 4 KB read and write operations at a queue depth of 32 performed well—even without any NVMe SSDs installed.

If you don’t want to make the jump to 10GbE (which has become surprisingly affordable), this example RAID 10 setup with 4 WD Red Pro 4 TB drives easily and consistently hits the real-world bandwidth limit of 2.5GbE SMB at about 285 MB/s with a mix of raw files and video clips, offering redundancy over single-drive failures and easier access across your devices when compared to external drives or DAS.

Editing video projects directly off the NAS is feasible when utilizing M.2 SSD volumes and connecting via 10GbE. For truly demanding 4K/8K multi-cam edits, local SSD storage is still king, but for many common creative tasks, the DXP4800 Plus delivers the necessary throughput to not constrain your workflow.

Value

This brings us to the core strength of the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus: value. Getting a 4-bay NAS with a capable Pentium-class processor, expandable DDR5 RAM, M.2 NVMe slots, and built-in 10GbE at this price point is genuinely impressive. Competitors often charge a significant premium for 10GbE capabilities or require add-in cards. UGREEN also deserves credit for supporting a wide range of third-party drives, avoiding the vendor lock-in some other NAS manufacturers are moving towards.

Who is this NAS for? I see it hitting a sweet spot for serious photographers, videographers, and small creative studios who have outgrown external drives or basic NAS units and need faster network performance without completely emptying their wallets. It provides the hardware foundation for efficient modern workflows, handling large files and offering room to grow. For photographers primarily using it for storing past shoots and catalogs, even pairing it with a 2.5GbE connection offers a solid performance uplift over 1GbE products. For videographers or those needing maximum speed, pairing it with a 10GbE switch unlocks its full potential while still remaining very affordable.

Conclusion

The UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus makes a strong case for itself in the crowded NAS market, particularly for content creators. It delivers an excellent combination of powerful hardware, future-proof connectivity like 10GbE, creator-centric conveniences like the SD card reader and M.2 slots, and an easy setup process.

While the UGOS Pro operating system is newer and its app ecosystem is still growing compared to the veterans, it handled all the file operations I threw at it reliably during testing, covers the core functionalities well, and the inclusion of Docker provides a powerful path for expansion. Given its competitive price, the DXP4800 Plus represents fantastic value, bringing high-performance networking and robust features within reach for many photographers and videographers ready to seriously upgrade their storage game. If you're looking for a capable, fast, and flexible NAS that won't break the bank, the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus definitely deserves your consideration.

The DXP4800 Plus is available now from B&H.

What I Liked

• Strong value and feature selection for a creator-focused NAS

• UGOS is surprisingly stable and pleasant to use for a newer OS

• Clean industrial design and quiet operation make this nice to have in an office or studio

• At time of writing, no vendor lock-in for RAM upgrades, drives, etc.

What Could Be Improved

• AI-centric features, while it's nice they're run locally, aren't as capable as other offerings

• UGOS has a few minor issues, like mistranslations, to address