UGREEN has continued to expand its NASync range, and this time we are looking at the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT.
We have previously reviewed the more beginner-friendly NASync DH2300 and the four-bay NASync DH4300 Plus, both of which showed that UGREEN is putting serious effort into making NAS devices more approachable for home users and small businesses.
The DXP2800 GT takes things up a level. This is a more performance-focused two-bay NAS aimed at users who want faster networking, more flexible storage options, local AI photo management, virtual machines, backups, and small office functionality.
And, in a similar fashion to a lot of other UGREEN equipment we have reviewed lately, the fit, finish and overall quality of the product has taken another step up, and the DXP2800 GT will look right at home on your media stand or office desk.
Inside the box, you get the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT itself, the power supply, Ethernet cable, setup documentation, and the accessories needed to install drives.
There is also a network cable, HDMI cable and a couple of keys to lock the drives in place in the unit.
Storage drives are not included, so you will need to supply your own HDDs and/or SSDs. As with any NAS, it is best to use NAS-rated drives, and ideally matching drives, if you want to make the most of RAID features.
All of the accessories included are high quality, and you have everything you need to get going.
The DXP2800 GT follows the same broad design language as UGREEN’s other NASync devices, but it has a more premium appearance. The space grey body with gold trim gives it a cleaner and more upmarket look than many traditional NAS units.
UGREEN has also included a magnetic dust mesh filter at the rear, which should help reduce dust and hair buildup over time. Cooling is handled by a hydraulic fan, with UGREEN claiming quiet operation in the 29–34dB range. During all of our testing, the unit was very quiet in use.
As this is a two-bay model, it is still relatively compact, making it suitable for a desk, shelf, small office, or home media setup.
While the unit is still undeniably a NAS, the visual improvements change it from being a box you’d probably want to hide away under a desk to something you will be happy to see sitting on display.
The two drive bays are accessed from the front of the device and have a small lock to keep them secure. Once released, the trays slide out and allow you to add a number of different drive types or sizes.
The trays have a genuinely useful system for installing drives without the need for screws, but they are also included in the pack for certain drive types.
We installed two 3.5” HDDs for our testing. The trays expand, allowing you to install the drive and then clamp them in place with plastic studs instead of screws. It is a nice design touch, and it is so much easier than fiddling with small screws.
Inside the unit, beside bay 1, there are two slots for installing additional NVMe drives. These NVMe drives, if installed, offer fast read and write speeds compared to the spinning disks and further expand the storage available.
The device is well covered for ports and connections. At the front, you have a USB-C port and a USB-A 3.2 ports for connecting external drives or other storage peripherals.
At the rear of the device you have the ethernet port, HDMI port, another USB-A 3.2 port and two USB-A 2.0 ports.
The power supply is also connected to the rear and is external to the device.
Powering the whole system is an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 along with 8GB of RAM which is expandable up to 64GB in total.
Overall the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT is a powerful and really well spec’d NAS in a very small footprint.
UGREEN has made the setup process really quick and painless.
As with the previous UGREEN NASync models I reviewed, setup is handled through UGOS Pro. You connect the NAS to power and your network, install your drives, power the unit on, and then complete the setup through a browser or the UGREEN app.
During setup, you create an admin account, configure the storage pool, choose the RAID option that suits your needs, and install any apps you want to use.
For a two-bay NAS like the DXP2800 GT, RAID 1 is the most sensible option for many users who want some protection against drive failure. RAID 0 is available if performance and full capacity are more important than redundancy, while JBOD and Basic are also supported.
We chose RAID 1 and from first power up, to fully setup, it took about 25 minutes in total. That includes remote access, storage pool setup and all required apps installed and set up. It is a very smooth process and straightforward even if you have little previous experience.
UGOS Pro is the operating system that powers UGREEN’s NAS devices. In my previous reviews of the DH2300 and DH4300 Plus, one of the main positives was that UGREEN had made the NAS experience more approachable than many people may expect.
The DXP2800 GT continues with that same overall approach. You get a desktop-style interface, clear settings menus, storage management, app installation, user management, remote access features, file services, backup options, and media management.
The key question with any newer NAS ecosystem is how mature the software feels compared with more established brands such as Synology and QNAP. UGREEN has made a strong start, but the long-term value of these devices will depend heavily on continued updates, app support, and software polish.
The system is quick and snappy to use. The majority of the apps and services required for home and office users are present and easy to access, install and set up. For more advanced users, the inclusion of Docker is a clever move by UGREEN as it adds a huge amount of services and possibilities through one app. While I think the majority of users will not use Docker a lot, for those who know what it is and can take advantage of it, it is an essential service to have available.
The improved hardware with this family of NAS makes a noticeable improvement to the overall UX. All aspects of navigating and interacting with the system are faster, and there isn’t a hint of lag anywhere.
One of the biggest upgrades with the DXP2800 GT is the inclusion of a 10GbE LAN port.
This is a major step up from the 1GbE and 2.5GbE ports found on many mainstream NAS units, especially for users who regularly move large files around their network. Photographers, videographers, content creators, and small office users are likely to benefit the most.
However, it is important to point out that you will only benefit from 10GbE speeds if the rest of your network can support it. That means a 10GbE switch or direct 10GbE connection, suitable cabling, and a PC or Mac with 10GbE support. If your network is limited to 1GbE or 2.5GbE, the NAS will still work, but you will not see the full performance benefit.
The DXP2800 GT supports two SATA drives and two M.2 NVMe SSDs, giving a maximum listed storage capacity of 80TB. UGREEN lists this as 2 × 32TB HDDs plus 2 × 8TB SSDs.
UGREEN also states that bays 1 and 2 support U.2 NVMe SSDs. U.2 SSDs are more of an enthusiast or professional feature, but they can be useful for high-endurance, high-speed storage workloads.
For most home users, the more likely setup will be NAS-rated HDDs for bulk storage, with NVMe SSDs used for caching or faster active storage.
Because this is a two-bay NAS, the RAID options are more limited than on a four-bay model. RAID 1 will be the obvious choice for users who want redundancy, but it reduces usable HDD capacity by mirroring the data across both drives.
With the two SSD slots, though, there are many more options than with a traditional two-bay system.
The SSD Cache feature uses high-speed SSDs to provide cache acceleration for storage pools created with HDDs. Once enabled, it can significantly improve random read/write performance and overall system responsiveness.
UGREEN NAS currently supports the following two SSD cache types.
Read-only cache accelerates data reads only. The system automatically caches frequently accessed hot data to the SSD. When the data is accessed again, it is read from the SSD first, improving file opening and browsing speed.
Features:
RAID types supported by Read-only cache:
Read-Write cache accelerates both data reads and writes. The system writes data to the SSD first and then synchronises it to the HDD, improving performance in scenarios involving frequent reads and writes of small files.
Features:
RAID type supported by Read-Write cache:
Overall, the options UGREEN have now included with the addition of two NVMe drive slots really opens up the functionality on offer and, importantly, offers a nice speed boost for the end user accessing data.
UGREEN is positioning UGOS Pro as more than just a basic storage operating system. The DXP2800 GT supports a growing app ecosystem, including media, backup, productivity, surveillance, Docker, and virtual machine features.
Key software features include:
We covered which apps were available in our previous reviews, so take a look there if you want to go into more details.
UGREEN highlights AI-powered photo management as one of the consumer-friendly features of the DXP2800 GT. The idea is that your photos can be stored locally on your own NAS while still benefiting from automatic organisation.
The system can sort photos by faces, places, and objects, and can also help identify duplicates. For users who want to move away from cloud photo subscriptions, this could be one of the more useful features.
Many people are paying for cloud storage because their phones are full of photos and videos. A NAS like this offers a way to keep that data stored locally while still making it accessible across devices.
If you would like to take back control of your image storage, A NAS like this is a really good solution. It is a pity that hard drive prices have increased a lot recently, so there will be an initial cost to get set up, but once you are up and running, you can store a whole family’s pictures and videos on the device easily.
Features like the AI Photo Management offer a nice way to sort images intelligently and to find all the pictures of a person or place that you have stored.
UGREENlink is UGREEN’s built-in remote access service. It is designed to let you access files securely from outside your home or office without needing to configure a public IP address or complex port forwarding.
This is important for mainstream users because remote access is one of the areas where NAS devices can become confusing. It makes the NAS much easier to recommend to people who want personal cloud storage without the monthly subscription.
Remote access is generally the area where a lot of new users become unstuck, especially if you don’t have the NAS attached to the router that brings the internet connection into your home and issues with double NAT can arise.
The solution UGREEN has implemented keeps things simple and very easy to get up and running. It handles the whole process, including dynamic DNS if you want to use a custom URL, and there really is no need for general users to go any deeper than this to get a workable remote access solution.
The DXP2800 GT can be used as a central media library for films, TV shows, music, and photos. UGREEN includes media-focused software features, and the HDMI output gives some additional flexibility depending on how you want to use the device.
The AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 processor, NVMe support, and 10GbE networking should make the DXP2800 GT a capable home media server, especially for users with large local media libraries.
There is a UGREEN app called “Theatre” for managing your locally stored TV series and films, and Jellyfin, another media management app, can be installed through Docker.
There is also a dedicated app called “Music for managing your audio collection.
All of this content can be shared across your network to compatible connected devices via DNLA so you don’t need a wired connection to access your content. Convenient if your NAS is not located near a TV or you want to be able to access your music on wireless speakers.
The AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 processor, 8GB of RAM, and the ability to expand to 64GB make the DXP2800 GT more interesting than a basic two-bay NAS.
Docker support means the NAS can be used for additional services beyond simple file storage. Depending on your needs, this could include media servers, download tools, smart home services, productivity apps, web services, or other self-hosted tools.
Virtual machine support also gives the DXP2800 GT more flexibility, especially for users who want a compact home lab or small office server.
The 8GB of included RAM should be fine for basic NAS use, but anyone planning to run multiple containers or virtual machines may want to consider upgrading the memory.
Features like running VMs would have been reserved for much more high-end NAS in the past, so it is nice to see the hardware required to do this being made available at that price point.
While I don’t think the aim of a device like this is to run multiple VMs at once, it is possible, but I think this feature will be very useful for people with a lower budget who need to do some system testing in a virtual environment and want to avoid the costs usually associated with that.
For those interested, you can find out more about Docker here: https://www.docker.com/
The DXP2800 GT also supports Surveillance Centre. UGREEN says this supports IP cameras using ONVIF/RTSP protocols, which should make it compatible with many mainstream network cameras.
Features include live view, recording playback, alerts, remote camera monitoring, and event detection.
This could be useful for small offices, home users with security cameras, or anyone who wants to keep footage stored locally rather than relying entirely on a cloud camera subscription.
It is a comprehensive piece of software that stores and manages all of your recordings and will offer a much cheaper solution for storage vs cloud subscriptions if you need to store footage from multiple cameras for an extended period.
Just keep in mind, if you connect multiple cameras, your network will increase significantly if you are recording footage from them all, so making use of the 10GbE networking on the unit will be a massive benefit if possible. Likewise, reads and writes on your installed drives will increase, so be sure to use high-quality drives and make use of the cache functions the NVMe slots provide.
One of the biggest arguments for using a NAS is control. Your data is stored locally, rather than sitting entirely on a third-party cloud platform.
UGREEN includes snapshot backups, encrypted file transfers, Security Manager, real-time virus scanning, flexible user permissions, and RAID options to assist with these functions.
As always, RAID should not be confused with a full backup. RAID can protect against a drive failure, but it does not protect against accidental deletion, theft, fire, malware, or user error. Important data should still be backed up elsewhere.
There are several included apps and services that you would expect for data management on the NAS, and others could be custom-built with Docker if needed for more advanced use.
The DXP2800 GT makes the most sense for home users, families, photographers, content creators, and small office users who want a powerful two-bay NAS with 10GbE networking.
It should suit users who want:
It is less suited to users who need large amounts of storage expansion, more advanced RAID options such as RAID 5 or RAID 6, or dual 10GbE networking. Those users will be better suited to the larger DXP4800 GT.
UGREEN has raised their standards again, and with the introduction of the DXP2800 GT, they now have a NAS offering with impressive hardware and speed of use at a very competitive price point.
The UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT is aimed at users who want more than basic network storage. It offers strong hardware, 10GbE networking, NVMe support, expandable RAM, local AI photo management, remote access, Docker, virtual machines, and surveillance features.
As UGOS Pro continues to improve, the DXP2800 GT is a compelling alternative to more established NAS brands, especially for users who want a high-performance private cloud without being locked into ongoing subscription costs.
You can find out more about the UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT here.
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