NAS DXP2800 2-Bay Desktop All-Round NASync Ideal for Small Team, Enthusiasts, Intel N100 Quad-core CPU, 8GB DDR5 RAM, 2.5GbE, 2X M.2 NVMe Slots, 4K HDMI, Network Attached Storage (Diskless)

VERY solidly constructed with a thick, HEAVY aluminum unibody, no sharp edges or unfinished surfaces. The design is well thought out and easy to access the M.2 drives and RAM. I thought there were 2 RAM slots but realized you can upgrade to a single 16 GB stick. It would be nice if there were 2 slots so I didn't have to keep a spare 8 GB stick, plus a 16 GB stick adds another big chunk of money to the total cost. Everything was easy to setup and works flawlessly with 2x12TB HDDs and 2x2TB M.2s. With an HDMI port this functions as a low cost HTPC and NAS in one box that doesn't require me to get too deep in the weeds managing things. I was considering the UGREEN mini PC with 4x M.2 drives but this one allows for much cheaper, larger capacity drives with the option for M.2 speed.

This is the easiest, best 4 bay NAS money can buy. You will be up and running in _no_ time. Snapping in four drives of whatever size you choose takes moments. I unwrapped four Toshiba N300 Pro 18TB drives and snapped them into the chassis in about 4 minutes. Connected the NAS to my 2.5GB ports on my lan and had everything up and running and updated with the latest software in under 30 mins. Time to get going is important, but what's more important is how does it run over time? I am 9 weeks into owning the thing and I can tell you this: The software is easy. The system is complete... it's robust... it has features I'll never use--and that's cool if you're looking for a gimungous media server or whatever... I needed it for digital camera RAW storage in a RAID5 scenario. I couldn't say more good things about the product. Managing permissions for users on your LAN is easy, managing storage and basic drive management, etc. is easy. Updating the software routinely as patches and security updates are released is easy. Once upon a time Apple owned "easy" and now iOS has 1138 settings in the general tab and nobody can make it do anything--but this NAS is _easy_. And good. High performance reads and writes near theoretical limits... I literally can not say enough good things about it. Buy it and don't look back. Great value, great performance.

I'm an IT nerd by trade. Normally, i build my own NAS units out of old machines. This time i decided to bite it and just buy a NAS because i'm lazy in my older age. This NAS is easy to set up and get running. has a ton of options for anyone, completely user friendly, easy to upgrade. Flexible thatit supports most x86/x64 based operating systems. you'd just need to upgrade the primary boot drive internally which is a 128gb SSD i believe. Yes you can run windows server on this thing but the default UOS has everything you'd need with less overhead. You can run TrueNAS or UnRaid if you want. tons of videos online showing you what to expect. Note that if you do change / swap the OS, you should either image the default boot drive or pull the drive and replace it then store the original drive in a safe place because ugreen has said you cannot download the stock base OS and restore it. The image i included or attached is the desktop. this is the web interface. the unit has a physical HDMI port and does supply video but i have not used it. Do yourself a favor though. upgrade the ram. the 4 bay unit has 1 ram slot. uses DDR5 i have DDR5 5900 in it, a single 32GB module. The Ram module runs at 1.1v i believe too. it will speed up the transfers and help the unit do what it needs to. Also drop in a pair of 512gb NVME drives and assign them as cache drives. this will boost the overall throughput too. i dropped in a pair of 2tb nvme drives just because i have a couple of them laying around. My unit i stuffed in 4 24TB sata NAS drives. you can use desktop drives but just know this thing will hammer on those drives so desktop drives might suffer in longevity and might prematurely fail. NAS / Enterprise grade drives will last longer and they are built to suffer. I have NAS grade drives in my unit. All are 7200 RPM. i get anywhere from 240MB/s to about 290MB/s transfer speeds this is before i added the cache drives. now i usually get around 730MB/s the unit manages the cache automatically. it will fill the cache drives then shove the data from cache to long term storage as it goes. I have mine configured for RAID 0, BFS file system. it asks you how you want it configured when you plug drives in and do the initial setup.

I’m a beginner when it comes to setting up my own NAS for business use, but the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 made the process incredibly simple. From unboxing to full setup, it took me just 20 minutes to figure out what needed to be done, install my WD 20TB hard drives, and configure the system. The only caveat: formatting the drives took a couple of hours—but that’s expected with high-capacity storage. 💾 Performance Upgrade: I paired the NAS with UGREEN’s Cat8 Ethernet cables (3ft and 10ft) to connect my router to my internet switch and then to the NAS. My system used to feel clunky with competitor cables and older hardware, but now it’s blazing fast and incredibly responsive. 🧠 Easy Setup for Beginners: The tool-free chassis and intuitive interface made setup a breeze. Even with zero prior NAS experience, I was up and running in no time. 🎯 Smart Features: Supports RAID, dual M.2 SSD slots for caching, and AI-driven photo management. It’s perfect for organizing client files and securely archiving business data. 📺 Connectivity & Design: The HDMI output and multiple USB ports offer great flexibility. The unit looks sharp, and paired with UGREEN’s blue and black braided Ethernet cables, my setup is both professional and stylish. Bonus: the braiding is resistant to love bites from my wife’s fur babies, which is a real win in our pet-friendly office. 🙌 Reliable Support: UGREEN’s customer service was excellent. I had a few setup questions, and their team was responsive and helpful.

The UGreen 2800 NAS is an exceptionally well built, very high quality unit that comes well packaged with quality connectivity cables. However, even if you have been working with PCs the better part of your life do not be expecting a simple 'plug and play' setup. If you are not technologically adept or able to navigate your way through setting up devices to communicate with each other through your home or budiness network, I'd strongly suggest you don't attempt to set this up without the aid of someone who can. The connection of the unit itself is straight forward. Drives load easily and connecting instructions up to the formatting of the drives are fairly clear and easy to understand. But that is where 'easy to understand' takes a holiday for what I would guess is probably 65% of the people who buy this thinking it's going to be like plugging a USB cable in between your PC and a desktop storage drive. A NAS is a computer, not a simple data storage device. The instructions that come with it cover nothing about setting the unit up to properly communicate with your PC through your home network. You are going to have to find out how to do that through your own research. When you have finished familiarizing yourself with the formatting and setup process for the hard drives in your NAS (drives are a seperate purchase and you need to check for their compatibility with your NAS on UGreen's site) be prepared to take VERY careful notes the whole way through the setup process. All the passwords, network addresses, administrator info...write down everything about the setup in detail as you will be using that information to set things up later. I personally found the UGreen site somewhat difficult to navigate, but what you will need to do is go there initially for instructions and app downloads. Even then, you will want to have your AI equipped search engine handy to research the plethora of additional questions that will come up for everyone but a person who has worked with this technology at work or been exposed to it by an associate. UGreen needs to get a layman who is NOT an engineer to write a soup to nuts set up manual covering all aspects of both PC, Mac and mobile device setup and connection of everything to your network so all devices can find and communicate with the NAS and each other. That manual will also need to be written so a kid can understand it. UGreen (like all NAS manufacturers and most You Tube video producers) seems to be of the opinion that producing exhaustively detailed setup instructions on any mental level below that of an IT expert would somehow 'insult' the average user's intelligence. And as most of you will find out, nothing could be further from the truth. This review has already turned into War & Peace, so I will not attempt to leave such a set of instructions here (although I produced one for myself). Still, UGreen really needs to develop one and INCLUDE that manual with the purchase of the device or at the very least on a very obvious spot on their website. If such instructions exist, I was unable to locate them. The best advice I can give is for people new to NAS system technology is to download the UGreen NAS desktop app to your PC or MAC and their mobile app to your phone. Everything you will need to get the NAS to find your PC, Mac or phone through your network is in those apps. It is just a real pain to get all the details correct so it will function. The good news is, once you figure it out, it does practically run itself. The bad news is, unless you are very persistent and have a good AI model search engine to assist you, you may have a lot less hair left once you get to that point. Please note...the UGreen NAS product itself is five stars all the way...my four star rating is due solely to the lack of simplified instructions that anyone could follow.

After a few months of using it, I can confidently say I’m absolutely thrilled with this little NAS! It’s incredibly powerful for its price and is actually more capable than some $700 models from Synology (one of the top leaders in the NAS market). I loved it so much that I even bought another one as a gift for a friend (the one who also used an external USB drive attached to his router and having issues with it), and he’s very happy with it too. To maximize performance, I purchased a 5 Gbps USB-to-Ethernet adapter from UGREEN ($23), connected it to the NAS, and plugged the Ethernet cable into the adapter instead of the NAS’s native port. This upgrade gave me 5 Gbps speeds, allowing me to transfer files to the SSDs in the NAS at over 500 MBytes/s. Since my router doesn’t support high speeds, I also added a TrendNet 10Gbit switch (model TEG-S762) with 4 x 2.5G RJ-45 Base-T Ports and 2 x 10G RJ-45 Ports. I connected both the NAS and my main PC to this switch (to the 10G ports, of course), enabling them to communicate directly through the switch instead of the slower router. While the number of 1-click installable apps is limited, the NAS includes a Docker app. With Docker, you can install virtually any application from thousands of available containers. To install apps, I ask Grok AI for the correct docker run command, which installs and starts the desired container. Using this method, I’ve been able to install everything I need. The NAS’s UI allows you to easily add users and configure remote access, so you can access your NAS from outside your local network with minimal setup. For torrent downloads, qBittorrent is natively supported, meaning it can be installed with just one click. I now download torrents directly on the NAS instead of keeping my PC running overnight for large downloads. The downloaded files are, of course, available to all devices on my home network. I share storage using the SMB (Samba) protocol. This is typically the default protocol for sharing folders, so don’t let the term SMB intimidate you—you won’t need to do anything special or complex to share folders. And the shared folders are immediately & reliably accessible from all my PCs & other devices. The transfer speeds are consistently fast, and I’ve had no issues with shares becoming unavailable. This is a huge improvement compared to the constant problems I experienced when using external drives attached to my router. I suspect this reliability is due to the NAS supporting the latest SMB protocol versions and supporting them well. The NAS also allows you to connect and share external drives via USB, which is a handy feature. It has a good number of USB ports - 4, including 2 x 1 Gbps ports. One feature I find absolutely essential is the NAS’s built-in Music app. It lets you maintain a music library, create playlists, and automatically updates the library whenever you copy new music to the designated folder. Thanks to the NAS’s remote access feature, I can listen to my music library from anywhere in the world, not just at home. As someone who listens to music for a few hours a day, I absolutely love this feature! The UGREEN NAS is excellent for managing documents. For example, if I’m at a doctor’s appointment and realize I forgot my insurance card, I can easily open the UGREEN app on my phone, access the document stored on the NAS, and share the necessary information. Similarly, when I return purchases (e.g., from Amazon or Walmart), I take photos of the return receipts with my phone and save them on the NAS in the /documents/returns folder with descriptive filenames like HeadphonesSennheiserHD820return.jpg. This system keeps everything organized and easily accessible. How does UGREEN NAS compare to other competitors? The main competitor - Synology - likely holds the largest share of the NAS market. However, its hardware falls short for the price. For example, the Synology DS725+, which costs twice as much as the UGREEN DXP2800, has less RAM and slower and fewer USB ports. Even worse, Synology NAS devices lack a dedicated system drive. This means you’ll need to install and configure the operating system on the drive(s) you install in the NAS. If a drive fails or needs replacement, you must reinstall and set up the operating system from scratch. I’m speechless—how much has Synology saved by omitting a small 32GB system drive, like the one UGREEN includes? Maybe $5–10? It’s absurd. UGREEN DXP2800 uses eMMC for its system drive. eMMC (Embedded MultiMediaCard) is a type of flash storage commonly used in mobile devices due to its low power consumption, which is typically 2–10 times lower than that of SSDs. While eMMC is usually slower than SSDs, it outperforms HDDs in both sequential and random access. Sequential read speeds range from 150–400 MB/s, and write speeds range from 100–250 MB/s. For random reads and writes, eMMC is significantly faster than HDDs, offering 50–500 times higher IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second). The IOPS difference does not directly translate to MB/s, but it’s closely related. For 4K random reads/writes, eMMC typically achieves ~10–120 MB/s, while HDDs achieve ~0.3–3 MB/s. Turning to other hardware specifications, no 2- or 4-bay Synology NAS matches the CPU power of the UGREEN DXP2800. The only Synology model with a comparable CPU is the 8-bay DS1823xs+, which can be yours for a mere $1,900 :) In comparison, Synology’s offerings look underwhelming next to UGREEN’s. There’s simply no contest. NAS devices are typically designed for low energy consumption, and the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 is no exception. According to UGREEN's official email, the power consumption for this model is as follows: Idle: 9–10W Disks Running: 16–27W Full Load: 51W When operating the DXP2800 without HDDs, the typical noise levels in different fan modes (adjustable via Control Panel > Hardware & Power) are: Quiet Mode: 29–34 dB Default Mode: ~40 dB Full Speed Mode: Potentially exceeds 50 dB These noise levels are quite low and barely noticeable in a quiet room. For comparison, my nearby mini-PC is significantly louder than the NAS when both are running. Of course, noise levels can be much higher if you install a very noisy HDD :) The DXP2800 maintains relatively low temperatures. Currently, under light workload (mainly just running qBittorrent), my NVMe and SATA SSDs are all in the 32–36°C range, while the CPU stays around 52°C. Initially, I was very concerned about the lack of space for NVMe SSD heatsinks. However, heat dissipation is managed effectively through a thermal pad between the SSDs and the aluminum chassis, which draws heat away from the bottom of the NVMe SSDs. It’s also important to note that the DXP2800’s M.2 slots use PCIe 3.0, which limits speed (still very fast for NAS use) but results in significantly lower temperatures compared to faster slots. An NVMe SSD in a PCIe 4.0 slot typically runs 5–15°C hotter than in a PCIe 3.0 slot, while a PCIe 5.0 slot can increase temperatures by 10–30°C for the same SSD. For peace of mind, I tested the NVMe SSD temperatures during extended full-load conditions, and they never exceeded 42°C—a very safe temperature for SSDs. Final Thoughts: After months of use, I’ve experienced zero issues with this NAS. It’s reliable, powerful, and packed with features that far exceed my expectations for its price. I’m absolutely happy with it and highly recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable and capable NAS solution.

Overall this product is great. It’s certainly beginner friendly. The sync feature is terrific; it keeps folders on the NAS and computer identical with no intervention from me after initial set up. Although it’s beginner friendly, I ran into more trouble setting it up than I was expecting. A browser couldn’t find the NAS on my network. I tried multiple browsers all on the same network and on different devices. I tried various other troubleshooting but in the end I could only set it up with the app. After it was up and running I tried a browser again out of curiosity but it still couldn’t locate the NAS. The app has worked perfectly though. I even had to go through the set up process twice. It timed out the first time and the NAS seemed to freeze. After the first failed attempt, the second try worked fine. Once it was up and running it didn’t give me any problems. I’ve had it up and running for a few weeks now and it continues to work very well. It comes with a few apps already installed and the ability to add more which has also been convenient. For items not available via an app directly you can use the docker, but that’s a bit more do it yourself.

Spend the extra money on this instead of trying to set up a NAS yourself. I promise you it's worth the price tag. I have so much to say but here's some of it in a Pros/Cons layout: Pros: -Simple And easy UI. -Straigtforward user permissions and user account management. -Compact size. -Great I/O, I am using the 2.5Gb Ethernet for my set up. -Desktop app on Windows can auto sync data between NAS and a folder on your computer. -UPS interface allows the NAS to safely shut down automatically during a power outage when connected to a UPS battery backup. -NVME can be installed as a storage buffer to speed up data transfer. Cons: -My 2 16TB WD Gold HDDs can get noisy when writing data to the NAS. -NVME drive install is somewhat cramped and hard to get to.