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Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: 30-second review
Ugreen has been a busy bee since the DXP4800 Plus launched in 2024. The DXP series made a considerable impression on the NAS market, arriving with proper build quality, a sensible feature set and pricing that put established names under pressure.
This is not a ground-up redesign. Ugreen has kept what worked and focused on what needed changing. The chassis is largely the same excellent aluminium alloy shell. The networking remains a combination of 10GbE and 2.5GbE. The storage layout of four SATA bays and two M.2 NVMe slots is unchanged. What Ugreen has done is swap out the processor, push the memory ceiling higher, and rework a few smaller details along the way.
Having spent time with the Plus model previously, I found the Pro immediately familiar. That is not a complaint. The Plus was already one of the better-built four-bay units on the market, and the Pro continues in that tradition. The question is whether the upgrade justifies the price premium over its predecessor.
What it offers is a punchier CPU, a more capable GPU, better M.2 slots, faster memory and a greater total memory capacity.
But Ugreen is not immediately removing its predecessor from its shelves. Therefore, those who don’t think all those improvements are worth the roughly $60/£60/€60 price increase over the DXP4800 Plus can still buy that model and save some money.
From this reviewer’s perspective, these enhancements are easily worth the extra, and the DXP4800 Pro is destined to become one of the best NAS devices for home and small business users.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? From $680/£586
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from Ugreen or through an online retailer
Before we get into pricing, we need to talk about how Ugreen initially wanted to repeat its Kickstarter approach with newer hardware, since that’s how they launched the original DXP machines.
This all went horribly wrong when Ugreen changed its mind about how it wished to launch the iDX series, having already taken deposits on the hardware, throwing a complete curveball at those who thought they’d secured an early system at a reduced price.
I’ve long been critical of companies that use Kickstarter as a marketing tool rather than for what it was meant to achieve. And, after this public relations mess, I suspect Ugreen will probably avoid using it in the future to channel interest.
You will be glad to know that the DXP4800 Pro isn’t part of a Kickstarter exercise, so you can buy it directly from Ugreen without jumping through any overly complicated marketing hoops.
For Americans, the Pro is $679.99 versus $619.99 for the Plus, a $60 hike. And for EU countries, the cost is €679.99, a €60 difference from the Plus model.
The official UK price for this NAS is £689.99, but the current offer is a much more realistic £585.99, more than £100 less.
That makes it £59 more expensive than the DXP4800 Plus, which seems reasonable considering the enhancements. At this time, Ugreen seems happy to sell both, but perhaps once the Plus model’s stock runs out, the Pro might replace it.
I’ve also seen it available for $679.99 at Amazon.com and £585.99 at Amazon.co.uk.
Who gets the best deal? Converting the UK and EU prices to US dollars, the UK is paying $797.33, and the EU is paying $798.36. Therefore, the US price is about $120 lower than in Europe, but much of this is due to the current weakness of the dollar.
Heading the competition is the Synology DS925+ at around $640. It runs an AMD Ryzen V1500B, which is a genuinely old chip at this point, supports only DDR4, has dual 2.5GbE rather than 10GbE built in, and getting 10GbE requires a pricey add-in card.
It could be argued that DSM is the best NAS operating system available, but the hardware is not in the same league as the Pro. Synology has also had well-publicised issues with its drive compatibility policies recently. It rolled back on the SATA drive limitations, but you must use Synology-branded M.2 drives in the DS925+. That makes it a non-starter for many.
QNAP TS-464 sits in a similar price bracket with a lower-spec Intel Celeron N5095 or N5105, dual 2.5GbE, M.2 slots, and PCIe expansion. QuTS Hero is a mature and capable OS. The PCIe slot is a meaningful advantage if you want to add a 10GbE card yourself, but you are paying extra to reach parity with what Ugreen gives you out of the box.
TerraMaster F4-424 Pro is probably the closest hardware match. It uses an Intel Core i3-N305 or similar, has 10GbE, M.2 slots and is priced competitively at around $690. TOS 5 is more mature than UGOS, but the interface is not as polished. TerraMaster is another NAS maker embracing third-party OS options, but I don’t think its hardware is as well finished as Ugreen’s.
Asustor has a new 4-bay in the AS6804T. But that’s north of $1300 for a system that has a quad-core Embedded Ryzen V3C14, 16GB of ECC DDR5, dual 10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN, and USB4 ports. But at this price, you can buy a six-bay NAS with Thunderbolt.
My honest summary is that the Pro’s hardware specification at $680 is difficult to match. The main trade-off buyers are making is between Ugreen’s maturing software and the deeper ecosystems of Synology and QNAP.
Ignoring the software part of this equation, the DXP4800 Pro easily delivers the best hardware for the asking price in this part of the NAS market.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Specs
|
Item |
Spec |
|
CPU: |
Intel Core i3-1315U (13th Gen Raptor Lake-U), 6-core, up to 4.5GHz Turbo |
|
GPU: |
Intel UHD Graphics (64EU) |
|
RAM: |
8GB DDR5-5600 (base), expandable to 96GB via 2x SO-DIMM |
|
Internal Storage: |
128GB SSD for UGOS Pro |
|
SATA Storage: |
4x 3.5/2.5-inch SATA III |
|
M.2 Storage: |
2x M.2 NVMe (both PCIe Gen 4 x4 |
|
Ports: |
1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) |
| Row 8 – Cell 0 |
1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) |
| Row 9 – Cell 0 |
1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) |
| Row 10 – Cell 0 |
2x USB-A 2.0 |
| Row 11 – Cell 0 |
1x HDMI 2.0b |
| Row 12 – Cell 0 |
1x SD 4.0 slot (front) |
|
Networking: |
1x 10GbE RJ45, 1x 2.5GbE RJ45 |
|
OS: |
UGOS Pro |
|
File Systems: |
EXT4, Btrfs |
|
Maximum Capacity: |
136TB (4x 30TB SATA + 2x 8TB M.2) |
|
RAID Modes: |
JBOD/Basic/RAID 0/RAID 1/RAID 5/RAID 6/RAID 10 |
|
PSU: |
19V 7.2A 150.1W external |
|
Power Consumption: |
42.36 W (drive access), 18.12 W(drive hibernation) |
|
Dimensions: |
257 × 178 × 178 mm (LxWxH) |
|
Weight: |
520g (including PSU, but without drives) |
|
Warranty: |
2 Years |
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Design
- Largely unchanged from Plus model
- Lockable Trays
- Simple and silent
If you know the DXP4800 Plus, the Pro will feel like home. The same compact aluminium alloy shell sits on the desk, looking rather purposeful in its near-black dark grey finish. Rounded edges take the industrial edge off things, but I did notice that the bend profile on the Pro is slightly tighter, saving perhaps a millimetre off the height of the NAS.
Four numbered drive bays occupy most of the front face. Numbering them is a small thing, but it avoids that horrible moment when you cannot remember which drive is which.
It’s also incredibly useful if you go from the Plus to the Pro, or from the Pro to one of the six or eight-bay designs later. All the trays seem identical, so you might not even need to take the physical drives out.
Drive trays use a tool-free telescopic mechanism for 3.5-inch drives, and SATA SSDs can be mounted in the trays using the included screws. Screws and a screwdriver are provided for 2.5-inch mechanisms, if you intend to use them. A lockable key system on the caddies adds a layer of physical security that many cheaper NAS devices simply do not bother with.
Below the bays sit the power button, activity LEDs, an SD card slot, and a pair of USB-A and USB-C 3.2 ports. The USB-C port runs at 10Gbps, which is genuinely useful.
Around the back, you find the 14cm diameter cooling fan behind its magnetic dust filter. That filter is attached magnetically, making it easy to pop off for cleaning, and it shows the kind of real-world thinking that separates good NAS designs from average ones. Also on the rear are HDMI 2.0 for 4K 60Hz output, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port at 5Gbps, two USB-A 2.0 ports, the 10GbE and 2.5GbE Ethernet jacks, and the DC power input.
The M.2 slots sit beneath a spring-loaded cover on the base of the unit. Access is straightforward. Two SO-DIMM slots are right next to them. The base 8GB module lives on one stick, leaving the other slot free for immediate expansion. Ugreen includes two adhesive thermal pads for the M.2 drives, which is exactly the sort of thoughtful addition that saves you a trip to the accessory drawer.
Build quality throughout is hard to fault. It was great when the DXP4800 Plus came out, and Ugreen haven’t dialled it back in any noticeable way.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Features
- Better CPU and GPU
- Faster memory
- Enhanced M.2 slots
The key upgrade is the processor. The DXP4800 Plus ran a 12th Gen Intel Pentium Gold 8505, a five-core part with a top frequency of 4.4GHz. Capable enough, but not a chip that was ever going to set the world on fire with heavy concurrent workloads. The DXP4800 Pro replaces it with a 13th Gen Intel Core i3-1315U.
That Core i3 is a genuinely better chip. It brings six cores in a hybrid configuration: two performance cores capable of full multi-threading and four efficiency cores handling background tasks. Turbo boost reaches 4.5GHz. The integrated GPU supports AV1 decoding natively, which matters if you are running Plex or Jellyfin and want hardware transcoding. The i3 also supports DisplayPort 1.4a and HDMI 2.1, though the hardware outputs them via HDMI 2.0.
Another significant change is the memory used. The Plus topped out at 64GB of DDR5 4800MT/s. The Pro raises that ceiling to 96GB (dual 48GB modules), which aligns with the i3-1315U specification. More importantly, the DDR5 speed steps up from 4800MT/s on the Plus to 5600MT/s on the Pro. That boosts bandwidth, although you still get a single SODIMM of 8GB by default.
Personally, I’d recommend any buyer to get at least another 8GB module, if the budget allows. I can imagine some reading this section and saying they would never buy a NAS that didn’t use ECC memory. And, it’s true that this NAS doesn’t offer ECC support. Synology is keen on that technology, should you insist on it.
All the hardware changes in this NAS revolve around the improved platform, and another of those is the enhanced PCIe lanes situation. On paper, the Intel Core i3-1315U offers up to 20 PCIe lanes, with a mix of PCIe 4.0 on the CPU and PCIe 3.0 on the chipset.
That’s identical to the Intel Pentium Gold 8505, so how is it seemingly better on the Pro NAS?
Given that the needs of all the external ports are almost the same, clearly some reorganisation of the PCIe lanes has occurred on the new Pro platform. On the Plus, one of the M.2 NVMe slots was PCIe 4.0, and the other was PCIe 3.0. Logically, that suggests that the Gen4 slot was connected directly to the CPU and the other Gen3 to the chipset.
Where now it looks like both slots on the Pro are connected to the CPU, and the chipset lanes are then reallocated for LAN ports and USB.
On the Intel Core i3-1315U, there are eight PCIe 4.0 lanes and twelve PCIe 3.0 lanes, meaning that all available PCIe 4.0 lanes have been used for the M.2 slots, unless Ugreen has introduced a PCIe switch. Why this wasn’t done on the Plus machine originally is a mystery, but it’s definitely an improvement for the Pro.
The SD card reader receives a quiet upgrade to SD 4.0, which is a small but welcome improvement for anyone who shoots a lot of card-based media. Everything else, the chassis, networking, port selection and accessory bundle, remains essentially identical. The Plus is still available and costs less, so buyers need to decide whether those CPU, memory, card reader and M.2 improvements are worth the premium.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Software
- UGOS Pro
- Limited applications
- Yes to TrueNAS and other 3rd-party OS
UGOS Pro runs everything on the DXP4800 Pro, and it continues to be a system with a genuinely friendly face. Setup is fast. Visit find.ugnas.com, let the discovery portal find the device on your network, name it, create an admin account, and you are off. UGOS walks you through pool creation with sensible guidance on RAID options for people who have never had to think about parity drives before.
Day-to-day management is handled through a clean web interface. Docker runs properly, and there is a Virtual Machine app for full hypervisor work. The Sync and Backup app handles local-to-remote and Rsync-compatible server tasks. Cloud Drives connects to seven cloud services, including OneDrive and Google Drive. Security Manager provides real-time malware scanning with quarantine. Samba sharing is disabled by default, which is a correct security decision even if it catches people out initially.
The harder truth is that UGOS still has 29 apps for this model. Synology DSM and QNAP QuTS Hero offer far larger ecosystems. Btrfs snapshots work well for shared folders, but iSCSI LUN snapshots are not yet supported. The mobile app lacks Wake-on-LAN unless you run a UPS. Power-loss notifications require the same UPS dependency. These are not dealbreakers, but they are the kinds of gaps that remind you this platform is still growing up.
Ugreen is clearly listening to its user base and pushing updates at a reasonable pace. Jumbo frame support at 9000 bytes arrived with a recent UGOS update, which makes a real difference to 10GbE throughput. A Surveillance Station equivalent remains on the roadmap but has not yet arrived. Being pragmatic, the trajectory for UGOS Pro is positive, but the destination is still some distance away.
What I do like is that Ugreen has a published roadmap for their operating system, which can be found here.
Therefore, if there is a feature you especially want to see on this hardware, you can check whether it is planned for next year. More of an issue is that some of the requested features do not appear on this list.
But, as Ugreen supports TrueNAS SCALE, Proxmox VE and Unraid, owners aren’t stuck with using UGOS Pro if an alternative provides that feature by default. Obviously, Ugreen won’t provide support for any issues you might have with TrueNAS if you install that, but it will still provide warranty support for the NAS hardware.
Overall, UGOS Pro has gotten dramatically better, but is still a little behind what QNAP and Asustor offer. However, the closure rate suggests it will be equivalent in the near future, and for many users, it already provides sufficient functionality.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Performance
- Plenty of power
- Network expansion possible
- More power consumed
With four Seagate IronWolf NAS drives fitted and a RAID 5 volume configured, the DXP4800 Pro connects to a 10GbE network and delivers what you would expect from properly specified hardware. Sequential reads reach around 9.2 GB/s with jumbo frames enabled. Sequential writes come in at approximately 8.1Gbits per second. Those numbers comfortably saturate a 10GbE connection, and that’s without needing SSD caching.
Real-world large file transfers sustain roughly 3.2Gbits per second in both directions. That is the nature of spinning disk technology. It’s fast enough for most serious workflows, but not the paper-limit headline figure. If you fit NVMe SSDs in the M.2 slots and run them as a dedicated pool, transfers between SSD pools are considerably faster, though they do not always reach theoretical ceilings.
It’s also worth noting that both LAN ports can be channel bonded with the right switch, and it is possible to add extra LAN bandwidth using USB adapters, and Ugreen also makes these.
Adding a 1GbE port will cost about $10, 2.5GbE is $26, and 5GbE is $36. Using these inexpensive add-ons can enable those sharing M.2 storage to get more of the performance they see internally out on to the network.
The Core i3-1315U earns its keep in mixed workloads. Running Docker containers alongside active file transfers while Plex transcodes video is the kind of scenario where the Plus would start to feel the pressure. The Pro handles it with more composure. The two performance cores with HyperThreading are particularly useful for tasks that benefit from high single-thread speed, while the efficiency cores absorb background processes quietly.
Power draw is higher than some competing alternatives. The external 150W PSU is a practical acknowledgement of that, but it’s no larger than the one on the Plus model.
Possibly due to the second PCIe Gen 4 drive, but also the extra performance core on the CPU, the Pro
If power efficiency is your primary concern, simpler ARM or low-wattage Intel N-series NAS units will serve you better. The DXP4800 Pro is not built for frugality; instead, it is more about capability. And, with more capability, the horizon of possibilities widens.
Ugreen DXP4800 Pro: Final verdict
The Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Pro does exactly what a mid-cycle refresh should do. It addresses the performance ceiling of its predecessor without trashing a perfectly workable form factor. The jump to a 13th Gen Core i3 is not a cosmetic upgrade. It translates into better concurrent workload handling, proper AV1 decode, and more headroom for virtual machines and containers. The 96GB memory ceiling and dual PCIe Gen 4 x4 M.2 slots round out a hardware package that looks very attractive at this price point.
If only memory and SSD storage were cheaper, allowing more of us to exploit these options.
Thankfully, at some point, the insanity of stockpiling memory, storage, and production capacity for AI datacentres that will never be built will end, and these systems can be enhanced with the parts needed to make the most of them.
The other elephant in the room remains UGOS. It is a capable operating system with a clean interface and a sensible setup flow, but the app ecosystem is shallow compared with what Synology and QNAP have built over many years. Missing features like iSCSI LUN snapshots and a surveillance application are genuine gaps for some buyers.
I know a surveillance app is being developed, so that one bugbear might soon be eliminated.
Given how far this OS has come since its work-in-progress launch, I’m confident that all the features people want will be added eventually. But unlike most competitor NAS, Ugreen have no issue with you installing TrueNAS on their hardware without invalidating the hardware warranty, should you want some of those features today.
The difference between this open, flexible approach and Synology’s absolute control-freakery is striking, and it’s undoubtedly driving market share toward Ugreen.
Also, for the right user, though, software limitations are perfectly manageable or even circumventable. If you need Docker, virtual machines, media serving and solid file storage performance in a well-built four-bay chassis with excellent 10GbE throughput, the DXP4800 Pro delivers all of that and more. Ugreen is improving UGOS with every update, and the hardware they have built around it gives the platform room to grow. The Pro is a compelling NAS that builds on the Plus version in a highly logical way.
Ugreen barrelled into the NAS market roughly two years ago like a bull in a china shop, and now has a reputation for exceptional hardware that’s priced competitively. And, nothing about the DXP4800 Pro suggests a misstep in their grand plan to dominate the SOHO NAS market in short order.
Should you buy a Ugreen DXP4800 Pro?
|
Value |
More bang for the buck |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
A good design largely unchanged |
4 / 5 |
|
Features |
Four bays and dual M.2 in a solid package |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Software |
Rapidly improving OS |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN and plenty of power |
4 / 5 |
|
Overall |
Better than the Plus in many ways |
4 / 5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
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