At Trusted Reviews, we often receive a wide range of technology. One benefit of the job is seeing the latest innovations, from highly technical business-focused equipment to consumer-ready devices designed to meet everyday challenges.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a technology typically associated with IT departments of large companies or data centers. This is why we were intrigued to examine the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 Plus. It’s important to note that this is not a full device review, but rather a look at the general technology, looking specifically at ease of use for general consumers.
UGREEN is a brand we know well. We have previously reviewed the 48,000mAh 300W Portable Power Bank, PowerRoam 2200, Nexode 100W 20000mAh Power Bank, PowerRoam GS1200, and HiTune T3, all of which scored an impressive 4 stars in our testing.
Given that this is UGREEN’s first venture into the NAS space in the UK, we were particularly interested to see their consumer-focused solution.
Why You Might Need a NAS
As storage requirements increase due to larger games and higher-quality photos, laptop storage capacity often struggles to keep pace and remains expensive per gigabyte. For example, a base Apple MacBook Air has 256GB storage. Upgrading to 512GB costs an additional £200, while 1TB and 2TB upgrades cost £400 and £800 respectively.
Cloud storage providers offer an alternative, but relying solely on them can have drawbacks. You might be locked into their infrastructure, subject to price increases, and face concerns about data security. Currently Google’s 10tb plan is £39.99/mo and Apple’s 12tb plan is £54.99/mo.
Network connection speeds can also limit how quickly you can move data between the cloud and your device. Furthermore, in today’s world where vast amounts of data are used to train AI, there’s a potential for your data to be used for this purpose in the future.
A NAS can alleviate some of these storage cost and accessibility issues. The UGREEN NAS DXP4800 Plus is currently priced at £479.99, excluding storage drives. It supports HDDs, SSDs, and has ports for 2 M.2 SSDs.
For price comparison, a 4TB HDD typically costs between £80-£100, though prices can be lower during Black Friday sales.
For around £800, you could have access to approximately 16TB of storage. The UGREEN NAS system also supports RAID provisioning, which cleverly stores data in a way that protects it should one of the drives fail. This is something that should be part of any NAS system you’re looking at buying. This is a significant advantage over using an external hard drive, where data loss can be permanent unless an expert can recover the drive, which is never guaranteed.
Everyday Usage: Professional Data Security
Beyond data redundancy, a NAS is useful because you can access it from any device on your network. There’s no need to find and plug in an external hard drive, and with up to 10Gb/s transfer speeds when plugged into the network and computer, it’s fast enough for data-intensive tasks.
While we’re primarily looking at the device as a storage medium, it also comes with an operating system that allows for the installation of apps for other purposes.
Notable features beyond storage include media server capabilities, backup solutions, and smart home integration with Home Assistant. This makes the NAS suitable for families, professionals, and small business owners.
Setting It Up
We were particularly interested in the setup process. NAS technology can be complex and has traditionally required a steep learning curve. However, setting up the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 Plus was straightforward and took no more than 5 minutes to insert the drives, plug in the device, and connect to the interface. Note that the NAS system must be connected directly to your router via Ethernet.
Step-by-Step Setup
1. Plug everything in: Connect the Ethernet cable to your router and the NAS system. Connect the power adapter and power on the device.
2. Go to the portal: On any computer on the network (which can be connected via Wi-Fi), go to find.ugnas.com. You will be asked to choose your device.
3. Add device details: Ensure you remember the Administration Account and Password details.
4. Add device details: You will be asked to register a UGREEN Cloud account. If you don’t want to, just hit the skip button.
5. System update options: We used the recommended settings and didn’t check the “share device data” option.
6. You’re in: After these steps, you’ll be in the UGREEN UI, which allows you to manage the device. You’ll find it’s a user-friendly interface.
7. Setting up redundancy: As mentioned earlier, you can set up RAID, which protects your data if one of the drives fails.
The UGREEN NAS 2800 and UGREEN NAS 4800 PLUS are now available in the UK via Amazon or directly from UGREEN
