Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra review: An affordable NAS appliance with a big hardware package and a sharp focus on AI

Ugreen's NASync desktop appliances are gaining a strong reputation in the NAS space as they score highly for build quality, hardware specifications, and prices. The premium Ultra series steps in at the top of the range and moves the focus up to growing businesses and power users that want a combination of high storage capacities, top performance, and plenty of features.

This is a review of Ugreen's flagship NASync DXP8800 Ultra 8-bay model, which has a modern Intel Core 7 150U mobile CPU in the driving seat. And eight efficient plus two multi-thread performance cores, a maximum 5.4GHz Turbo frequency, and a minuscule 15W base TDP. Along with a faster CPU, the only other notable difference with Ugreen's older DXP8800 Plus is that the maximum DDR5 memory capacity has been increased by 50% to 96GB.

The DXP8800 Ultra employs exactly the same solidly built aluminium chassis as the Plus model, so you get a veritable port-fest. A standout feature is the pair of 40GbE Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, but there are also dual 10GbE multi-Gigabit, USB-A 3.2 Gen2, and USB-A 2.0 ports, along with an integral SC4 card reader, while 8K video output from the CPU's Iris Xe Graphics 96EU chip is routed to an HDMI 2.1 port.

Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra review: Hardware features

The main drive bays use tool-free telescopic carriers and you can pick from a wide choice of devices as Ugreen's compatibility list currently shows 57 different models which include plenty of NAS-specific HDDs from Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba.

You'll also find two M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe 4 slots lurking behind a spring-loaded cover in the base which can be used as high performance storage pools or caches. Alongside them are two SODIMM slots with one occupied by the base 8GB of 5,600MHz DDR5 memory.

The rear magnetic dust cover has two 12cms diameter cooling fans behind it and during testing, we found they were whisper-quiet. There's also a PCIe Gen4 expansion slot alongside but although the user manual provides clear instructions, patience is required as it's very difficult to access.

Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra review: UGOS and apps

For testing, we loaded four 4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDDs and used Ugreen's web portal to discover the appliance and install the latest UGOS software. The web console is easy to use and aids storage pool creation with sage advice on the various RAID options based on the drives selected.

We chose the recommended RAID5 volume and were prompted to create personal and shared folders and configure remote access, which creates a unique Ugreenlink ID and secure web link. We opted for a Btrfs volume to enable storage quotas and snapshots and noted that the latter feature still only supports NAS shares and not iSCSI LUNs.

Ugreen lags behind Qnap and Synology for app choices, but it is catching up as 35 are now available for the DXP8800 Ultra. The Model Manager and OpenClaw agent apps are of particular interest as they bring smart AI tools into play.

Model Manager provides a central location for managing AI features, but Ugreen's AI Console, Uliya, and Voice Memos apps are only supported by the iDX models. For the DXP8800 Ultra, the Model Manager integrates with the Photos and Surveillance Center apps and provides facilities for authorising various AI models for them, including people, text, and image recognition for photos, plus facial recognition and general detection for surveillance.

OpenClaw uses the Docker app and the latest UGOS updates its engine to 29.6.2, which addresses a number of security issues. If you're planning on using OpenClaw, you'll find Darien Graham-Smith's excellent in-depth tutorial in Issue 383 of PC Pro.

Other apps of distinction include Sync & Backup, which secures local data to a remote Ugreen NAS and vice versa, and also supports Rsync servers. The Cloud Drives app provides file syncing for ten cloud storage services including Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, while Ugreen's NAS Windows and macOS desktop tools use sync tasks to secure selected data to shared folders and update it in real time.

The appliance's HDMI port comes into play only when you use Ugreen's mobile app. Load the Theatre app, pick a video to stream, select the HDMI Play projection mode, and sit back and enjoy.

Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra review: 10GbE performance

For our speed tests, we hooked the appliance up to the lab's Zyxel XMG1930-30HP multi-Gig switch and mapped a share over 10GbE to a Dell PowerEdge Windows Server 2025 host. Ugreen added UGOS support for 9000-byte Jumbo frames earlier this year, and with these enabled, we saw good Iometer sequential read and write rates of 9.2Gbits/sec and 8.8Gbits/sec and random speeds of 9.2Gbits/sec and 0.7Gbits/sec.

For our real-world tests, copies of a large 25GB test file between the appliance and server delivered sustained read and write rates of 3.8Gbit/sec and 3Gbits/sec. Securing a 22.4GB folder with 10,500 small files to the share averaged a very respectable 2Gbits/sec.

From the SAN Manager app, we created a 500GB iSCSI target and, after mapping it to our host server, watched Iometer report back with very similar sequential and random read and write rates as the NAS share. We noted that although the SAN Manager clustering feature allows multiple clients to connect to the same iSCSI LUN, MPIO (multipath I/O) for redundant, load-balanced links is not currently supported.

For cache testing, we installed two Kingston M.2 NVMe SSDs and assigned them to our data volume as a mirrored read/write cache. This made significant improvements to random write operations with our NAS share and iSCSI LUN, seeing respective speed increases of 245% and 290%.

Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra review: Is it worth it?

For an 8-bay NAS with dual TB4 and 10GbE ports, the NASync DXP8800 Ultra looks like a good value, with it currently listed on Ugreen's US site for $1,799. Competition comes mainly from Qnap's new TX-h966TX 9-bay hybrid NAS, which sports dual TB4 ports, a 6-core Core i3 CPU, a single 10GbE port, and support for up to four U.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs.

Ugreen's UGOS OS is a work in progress, but all the important apps are present, while the OpenClaw agent and Model Manager show its continued focus on developing AI-powered capabilities. At first glance, it does look to be a modest hardware upgrade over the DXP8800 Plus model, but the Core 7 150U CPU is noticeably faster across the board than the older Core i5-1235U, and memory capacity is 50% higher, so it can easily cope with current and future workload demands.

Ugreen NASync DXP8800 Ultra specifications