As I write this, I’ve 78 gadgets linked to my house community, together with telephones, tablets, Home windows machines, Android TVs, means too many Govee lights, and different sensible house tech. Crucial system, nonetheless, is my network-attached storage (NAS) system; it homes all my information, acts as my media and music server, and basically runs my sensible house.
So in the case of choosing a brand new NAS, I am exacting in my wants. I am nonetheless utilizing the 100TB house server I arrange two years in the past with the DiskStation DS1823xs+, however I wished a brand new NAS solely as a media server, and there was an apparent alternative: UGREEN’s DXP4800 Professional.
I examined the DXP4800 Professional when it got here out, and it grew to become clear to me that it’s a highly effective Plex NAS. After the overview, I slotted in two 24TB Seagate Exos X24 together with two 22TB IronWolf Professional NAS HDDs, and started transferring media and putting in all of the utilities and providers I depend on every single day.
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How I examined the DXP4800 Professional
After three and a half months of in depth testing — totaling nicely over 2,500 hours of use — streaming 4K Plex content material on nicely over a dozen gadgets, and writing 54TB of knowledge to the drives, I can state with confidence that the DXP4800 Professional is the very best all-round media server you should purchase in 2026. I will go into loads of element about how I examined the NAS over the past three months, however earlier than I get began, here is a high-level overview of the {hardware}.
The DXP4800 Professional is a 4-bay NAS with the very best internals in its class. It is powered by an Intel Core i3-1315U and has {hardware} transcoding (splendid for Plex and Jellyfin), 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and a 2.5 Gigabit connection, 8GB of reminiscence, a 128GB built-in SSD, and two NVMe M.2 SSD slots. The Intel Core i3-1315U platform is a stable alternative for NAS servers, and it is no shock that the majority producers are utilizing it of their fanatic fashions. The DXP4800 Professional is out there for $719 on Amazon, and you too can purchase it on UGREEN’s web site.
Placing the DXP4800 Professional by way of its paces
I began testing the DXP4800 Professional by putting in UGOS Professional, UGREEN’s web-based software program. It has come a great distance within the final 12 months and is now at some extent the place you don’t really feel such as you’re lacking out on any of the fundamentals. After set up, I created a storage pool with the 4 drives; I like to recommend utilizing a mirrored configuration for those who’re seeking to arrange a NAS, as that means you’ll preserve information integrity ought to a drive fail. As I had this information in at the least two different areas (I’m obsessive about storage), I simply went with JBOD.
Then got here organising all of the providers I take advantage of, and this constituted the majority of the testing. I put in Plex and Jellyfin to handle media, an occasion of Roon to handle my music library, Immich to deal with images, and Tailscale to entry the NAS remotely. Whereas Jellyfin and Dwelling Assistant are listed in UGREEN’s app retailer, they’re put in as containers anyway, so I simply relied on Docker to put in all the pieces. It’s simpler to handle, and I get higher insights into how a lot system sources every service is utilizing.
I favor putting in utilities like Plex and Jellyfin through Docker. I discover these situations extra steady, and I get the pliability to make any configuration adjustments I would like. On that be aware, the 8GB of pre-installed reminiscence makes an enormous distinction. Even with eight providers working 24/7 inside containers, I had 3.2GB of usable RAM left, with sufficient headroom to run a VM by allocating 2GB of reminiscence.
That mentioned, I subsequently put in a 16GB DRAM module, boosting the reminiscence to 24GB and giving me a lot better headroom to work with VMs and different containers. Even for those who do not need to go this route, know that the built-in 8GB of reminiscence is greater than satisfactory for many homelab pastime tasks.
I took ten days to maneuver the information to the DXP4800 Professional, transferring over 54TB in that point. I used to be conservative on this regard, as I didn’t need to switch the whole dataset in a single go, and I used rsync to maneuver every class — images, music, paperwork, and media — individually. A giant chunk of that was my music manufacturing library that features VST devices and their related media.
I linked the DS1823xs+ to the DXP4800 Professional utilizing a 10GbE swap to take full benefit of the 10GbE connectivity out there on each servers, and I used to be in a position to saturate the NAS HDDs’ bandwidth fairly simply. I acquired near the 280MB/s most bandwidth of the Exos X24 and IronWolf Professional drives, and I noticed combination transfers hit as excessive as 580MB/s — each NAS methods might simply deal with six instances that bandwidth, so this wasn’t an issue in any respect. This was whereas shifting greater recordsdata; photographs and paperwork usually transferred at a way more modest common of round 120MB/s.
Thermal administration can change into a problem with sustained file transfers, and fortunately, it didn’t show to be an issue on the DXP4800 Professional. The 140mm fan was efficient at shifting warmth away from the internals, and the drives didn’t exceed 48 levels Celsius.
What I like about Seagate’s NAS HDDs is that they’re designed to run 24/7, and so they include distinctive options like vibration resistance, which is critical in a NAS system.
However greater than anything, it’s long-term reliability that issues. Whereas the drives I used within the DXP4800 Professional have now clocked just below 3,000 hours (I nonetheless rely that as virtually new), I’ve had a number of IronWolf Professional HDDs within the final decade which have clocked over 50,000 hours of utilization, and I haven’t run into any points with any of those drives but (fortunately).
After the information switch got here the true take a look at: media streaming. I used Plex predominantly, and the DXP4800 Professional delivered three high-bitrate 4K transcodes concurrently, which is not any small feat. {Hardware}-assisted transcoding through the built-in Intel Fast Sync platform is restricted to Plex Go customers, and when you have older consumer gadgets like an early-gen iPad, this characteristic will turn out to be useful.
Nonetheless, most newer gadgets have the requisite media containers and codecs to play media recordsdata, so you do not truly must transcode content material more often than not — outdoors of testing how the NAS holds up on this space, I solely needed to depend on direct play. That mentioned, in case your video is encoded utilizing H.265 and you’ve got a TV or streamer that may’t deal with the codec, it should have to be transcoded to H.264 to play on the consumer system, and all of that is accomplished routinely.
The decision is obvious
After taking part in dozens of hours of footage through Plex and Jellyfin over the past three months, it grew to become clear that the DXP4800 Professional is the very best 4-bay Plex NAS.
I did discover higher-than-usual energy draw typically, with the NAS idling at 24—28W, going as much as 60W when the drives are in use, and exceeding 85W underneath load. There may be loads of headroom, although, given that you just get a 150W energy brick, so this isn’t an issue as such. Averaged over three months, the facility utilization was nicely throughout the limits of a strong 4-bay server, so I did not fear about it an excessive amount of.
General, the DXP4800 Professional is indisputably top-of-the-line 4-bay NAS servers round. The mixture of highly effective {hardware} and UGREEN’s wise software program selections offers it a leg up over its rivals, and after intensive testing, it has persistently confirmed to be dependable, which is what I search for essentially the most in a media server.
The DXP4800 Professional does all the pieces I would like in a Plex NAS, and for those who want a brand new media server, that is the one I like to recommend.
