UGREEN, the company famous for its USB chargers and phone docks, is bringing out. The company has today announced its first entry into the world of network attached storage (NAS). And its first entry is a series of six models.
The UGREEN NASync series (buy here) comes in six different models in various configurations. There’s a 2-bay, two 4-bay, a 6-bay, an 8-bay and an all-flash flash unit offering up to 16TB of SSD storage at up to 10-gigabit ethernet.
UGREEN NASync – Network Attached Storage
Like most NAS units on the market today, the UGREEN NASync series is designed for personal, home and business use. It acts as an “intelligent data management centre” for users to store data from their phones, tablets, laptops, TVs and other networked devices.
It’s all stored locally, so it’s a lot easier to get access to than cloud storage if you have a major loss. It’s also encrypted, so even if somebody else gets their hands on it, reading your data will be challenging, to say the least.
It comes in a more traditional hard drive configuration with 2, 4, 6 or 8 hard drive bays. These units will also hold up to two M.2 NVMe SSDs as well. With support for up to 22TB HDDs and 4TB SSDs, that means the 2, 4, 6 and 8-base units offer up to 52TB, 96TB, 140TB and 184TB, respectively.
The M.2 flash-only NAS box supports up to four 4TB M.2 NVMe SSDs for a total of 16TB of storage over a fast 10-gigabit ethernet connection. This makes for a great backup solution for active projects you’re working on that you can actually edit.
Hard Drive Backup vs SSD
All five of the HDD-based models – technically, four models with two flavours of one of them – feature a 12th Gen Intel CPU of some description, along with 8GB RAM. The RAID capabilities vary from one model to the next, with the more advanced (and expensive) models offering configurations that the lower-priced models do not.
While hard drives may not be the fastest storage these days, they’re great for archiving. And if you’re on Gigabit ethernet, modern mechanical hard drives will max out that bandwidth. Fortunately, all units support 2.5-gigabit ethernet, with the 6 and 8-bay units offering dual 10-gigabit ethernet.
To keep up with the fast network speeds, multiple RAID configurations are available, with the 2-bay unit offering RAID 0/1 and the other units offering RAID 0/1/5/6/10. Which is “better” is for you to decide based on your own needs, but there are multiple options available.
The 2 & 4-bay units offer up to USB 3.2 Gen 2 inputs for plugging in external hard drives and other storage, in case there’s not enough room internally. The 6 & 8-bay units upgrade this to Thunderbolt 4, quadrupling the bandwidth available.
The small quad SSD unit offers up to 16TB of storage through 4x 4TB M.2 NVMe SSDs. This might not sound like a lot of space compared to the other units, but this one isn’t designed for maximum capacity. It’s designed for maximum speed for professional media users.
Who unit should I buy?
2-4 bay units
At the lower end of the NASync lineup, we’ve got a 2-bay and two 4-bay units. These are the DXP2800, DXP4800 and DXP4800 Plus. The DXP2800 and DXP4800 feature a 12th-Gen Intel N100 Quad-core CPU, 8GB RAM, and 32GB eMMC storage.
The DXP4800 Plus upgrades the processor to a 12th-Gen Intel 8505, with 64GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. It also adds a 10Gb ethernet socket in addition to the 2.5Gb socket. All three models also offer 4K video over HDMI, making it ideal for a media server.
6-8 bay units
The three models above are designed for personal and home users. They’re for storing your movie and music collection and general storage for your family. The three models below, however, are designed for professional use. They even output 8K video over HDMI for those who’ve upgraded beyond 4K cameras.
The UGREEN DXP6800 Pro and DXP800 Plus are the company’s 6-bay and 8-bay units in the NASync lineup. They feature a 12th-Gen Intel 1235u 10-core processor. They have 8GB RAM, upgradeable to 64GB, and a pair of 10Gb ethernet sockets on the back.
They’re built for people who need a lot of storage. Things like video editing and even photography if you shoot often enough, will need this kind of space. Even if it just ends up being an archive of completed projects.
Quad M.2 NVMe SSD
The last unit is the DXP480T Plus. Instead of hard drives, this holds SSDs. It’s not really designed to be a replacement for any of the models above. It’s not supposed to be for huge long-term storage. Instead, it’s for editing on.
Four fast 4TB SSDs mean up to 16TB total over 10-gigabit ethernet. You also get a couple of Thunderbolt 4 sockets for expanding this with other storage, such as portable SSDs. It also supports RAID 0/1/5/6/10, offering some options for speed vs stability.
When you’re editing large video projects with several terabytes of footage, an M.2 NVMe NAS is certainly going to give you that speed and space you need to work.
Price and availability
UGREEN is running the launch of the UGREEN NAsync series on Kickstarter. Quite a surprise from the company who just puts everything straight onto Amazon. I expect we’ll see these popping up on Amazon sooner rather than later.
Here is a list of all of the units, along with the Kickstarter campaign price and the regular price once it goes retail.
UGREEN DXP2800 2-Bay – $239 / $399.99
UGREEN DXP4800 4-Bay – $359 / $599.99
UGREEN DXP4800 Plus 4-Bay – $419 / $699.99
UGREEN DXP6800 Pro 6-Bay – $599 / $999.99
UGREEN DXP8800 Plus 8-Bay – $899 / $1,499.99
UGREEN DXP480T Plus 4-Bay NVMe SSD – $479 / $799.99
