UPDATE: 1: After some discussion with Ugreen, it appears they WILL honor their hardware warranty if you use another Operating System. It is still not a supported use case though. They want you to use their own OS, and will NOT provide tech support for issues third party operating systems. - There were rumors regarding lack of warranty with another OS, but I am glad to hear they'll keep you covered hardware wise. 2: The NAS HAS been produced, and WILL be for sale at the end of May. They're telling me the Kickstarter is for consumer feedback and communication prior to launch. 3: With the $5 deposit: "This deposit will be refunded in full at the end of the crowdfunding campaign, regardless of whether or not purchase NAS, but guarantees that you will get 40% off at any time during crowdfunding." 4: Docker and VMs are planned for release in April. - There wasn't a set release date before so glad to see that. Every like on this comment is one person who read the title, assumed I was hating on the NAS, and never watched. Also join my discord. discord.gg/2Wj8WanUzn

Software on a pre-build NAS is everything, if your OS sucks ass nobody cares about the great hardware. That's why Synology is dominating the market imo.

There is a setting in UEFI you have to turn off so it doesn't restart when it's not detecting default OS running. Advanced > WatchDog Settings > WatchDog Control > Disabled That's what I get for posting before watching whole video ... you found it :D And you don't have to remove the SSD, it is enough to rename EFI folder on it to get to UEFI.

For me, it gives the impression that they are trying to cover two totally different markets at the same time. There are the "OS is a must!!!" type of guys who, as you mentioned, don't even want to install something on a USB. Then, there's the other segment who dislike underpowered or overpriced solutions like Synology, but love good hardware, and their first question is often "Can I wipe the SSD and install TrueNAS?" To be honest, the cheapest solution is priced (at least during the Kickstarter campaign) like a Beelink EQ12. If it had 2x2.5G LAN, I would probably buy three and build a simple cluster from it, just for luls. Three N100 nodes with 2x3.5" HDD + 2 NVMe each? That would be a pretty cool Proxmox cluster! :D

The kickstarter is almost certainly aimed at showing investors that there is a demand for these products. They're going to take a loss on any units sold via Kickstarter but that's fine because they'll make it up with both investor funding and the profit margins from those sold after the kickstarter discount is over. The first generation is basically going to be a wash money-wise intended purely to get their name into the prebuilt NAS market. The 2nd and 3rd generations I expect to be both cheaper as a whole, and the "real" products that they're intending to sell at MSRP.

They never take a loss when discounting, never. But to servive they need the margins to fund the next development and the support for the sold products.

What makes the NAS completely obsolete for me is that they want to force you to use their own OS. And if you install anything other, they void your warranty. So yeah, I'm sticking with my Dell Optiplex. Great Review anyway. You actually showed what i wanted to do with this. Keep it up.

I kinda like it, hardware wise at least. Let me throw the OS I want on it and it could be a nice quiet backup server all day.

3:16 They actually did a Q&A session with another KZfaqr on this. According to them-- As they are just entering the NAS space, they wanted to scout demand and advertise using space available that crowdfunding sites offer to emerging tech. Two their software still has issues (and people are significantly more forgiving towards a crowd-funded early release product vs a product launched into retail), and the reason why they went with a customized fork of Debian instead of barebones is that they don't want to be sucked into offering tech support to every software configuration edge case.

i freakibng LOVE STORAGE SOLUTIONS AND ENGAGEMENT

Definitely interested in something like this for family and friends that ask for a cheap NAS that just want something that'll store family photos that they don't have to kerfuddle with Synology's crazy HDD practices. Guess the kickstarter is so Ugreen can steal Synology's homework when it comes to the UI.Either way, loved the video. Gonna go back and watch the rest of your stuff because your editing is on point and you're not drawing things out to feed the algorithm.

I think the reason for the 40% discount is because NAS in general are very high margin products. The competition is also asking for a lot of rupees. I think this is because there is a relatively small amount of people actually considering buying a prebuilt NAS. Those same people generally know stuff about building computers. If anyone reading this comment wants a NAS and know how to tinker with custom pcs, you might consider building your own.

With Kickstarter they don't actually have any obligation to deliver anything, if something goes wrong with production. Stuff like warranty might also be handled differently. It also serves as a form of advertising, with Kickstarter listing top selling projects at the top.

It's waytoofuckingexpensive. That being said, the *platform* is actually dope. Upgradable Ram, SSDs, video out, 4 bays, a decent processor and a 10gb port? Yes!? But not for that many money. That's too many money.

As someone who would never buy a premade NAS, preffer TrueNAS, this might be something I would look into in the future as a "hardware only" option. So, really hope they keep it unlocked... Think with the cost of good NAS cases, CPUs,RAM and MOBO... THIS might be a great option for both new to NAS people and those looking to grow into fully customizable software builds. But hey, odds are they want the tracking software intact, will lock it down and fail to sell very many..... corporate mentality vs reality.

Kickstarter these days feels less about raising capital to do the thing, and more marketing of the thing we are going to make anyway

You're officially in the big leagues now.

Compared to Synology crap, the hardware is actually solid. The OS is half backed but it is running on Debian so it has a solid foundation. I think if they take care of the jank and allow you to run it as a Plex server instead of trying to develop their own system, it will fulfil the needs for a lot of people

Fantastic rundown and tear down vid! So happy KZfaq served this to me, you’ve gained a new subscriber! I saw how there was a social media marketing push for this, but I ignored all the other videos and for some reason decided to watch yours because you had a pretty catchy title. I’m really glad I did. You went through things that other KZfaqrs obviously wouldn’t. You did things that most people would never do, and now I know that while yes this is a pretty slickly built little machine, it’s not for me.

Thanks for this, I've been holding off on my video until the docker support comes out.

I'm in the UK, it's now only available in the US and Germany for the Kickstarter. Because of that, with no idea when it will really be available worldwide I'll probably go for a Terramaster. For a company with no history in the NAS space those Kickstarter prices will, I believe, be near the selling prices, their RRP pricing isn't competitive.

Love your approach to these

As somebody who has built already 4 systems with Intel N100(2 for myself), got to say that even their “40% kickstarter” supposed price cut is at least 2 times more expensive than doing it yourself and slapping TrueNAS on it. Of course, not everybody wants to deal with assembling their own system.

@9:30 Your WD40EFRX drives are NOT SMR, they are decent CMR drives!

Man the quality of the videos comapred to the amount of subs is insane. Good job, keep it up!

These types of kickstarters are my favorite. The company has already produced the product and just need the capital to ramp up manufacturing and marketing. Whereas the kickstarters where nothing has been done except for 3D mockups, you never know if it actually will deliver.

Great review

Good review. I'll consider this one if I will ever need a NAS.

I like it when there's more competition in various segments of I.T. Hardware, especially in the GPU segment and NAS I'd love a dual bay one to replace my QNAP TS-233, I have a question IF I already have data on my 2 RAID 0 drives, should I migrate them drives to the new NAS with a RAID 0 config will I retain my data? or should I back the data up to a external before migrating the NAS drives to the new unit? I might upgrade my NAS to the UGREEN ones come out. I'll wait for the bugs to be fixed with the issues you mentioned in the video, the app; features etc. I use this as well as a media server, run VMs through there too.

Did you try is it possible to set this onboard sata controller to hba mode so you can use zfs for truenas scenario?

Nice vid mate

As a home user, who is just looking for something to store/archive photos, videos and also stream ripped movies from my DVDs/Blurays (using VLC to stream from a using a Chrome-based Android tv) - is this a good value proposition or should I still be looking at the Synology range?

The OS looks extremely similar to Synology DSM

Any concerns (outside the norm) with utilizing a NAS from a company based in China? Have you noted any newly-open listening ports or conducted network analysis to check if there are any unknown outbound connections from the NAS or any of your other networked-connected devices after connecting the NAS to your home network?

@aChairLeg can you please explain or better yet show somehow how exactly the backplane is connected to the MoBo ? Weird question but I have something going on my mind for a while and would love to know...

@aChairLeg can you say something about the power consumption under Pop!_OS? It seems idle power consumption is very high under UGOS OS, and some people think it's because Ugreen did not implement (most of the) power saving features yet.

@ 9:30 you say the WD Red are SMR - the WD40EFPX is indeed CMR, and has a max 'outer' Transfer Rate of about 190 MBps - I use a few of those in my NAS. The "Plus" Models are CMR, the "non-Plus" are SMR, and the "Pro" are 7200 rpm with CMR

They launched NAS products in China back in 2022 so this strictly speaking is not their first attempt. Also I heard that they have a major os update coming, hopefully it will improve their software experience

The 6 bay is actually a pretty good price for what you get (assuming you don't want to DIY) and the N100 unit's aren't too terribly overpriced (assuming you get the kickstarter price). That said the 'kickstarter for a in production item' thing seems somewhat shady and it being such a pain to put another OS on there and it being unsupported are 2 pretty big negatives. Still interesting to see another player in the off the shelf NAS market, guess we will see how they do in time.

Subscribed because of your rant at 15:00 lol.

IF you want the hardware, buy it, put Unraid on it, be happy. I don't think I'd want their OS but I *do* really want that hardware. It looks beautiful!

You're not wrong about just enjoying your misadventures. I just spent $5k on a 7950x3d/proart x670/4070 ti super/64gb 6000mt/2tb samsung 990 +16tb pcie 4.0 data drives build.

Does it use MDADM for the array management?

I put in a preorder for the all SSD one because i got a few ssd's laying around and that would be wonders for a mini virtualization box if i can get windows or unraid or proxmox on the main ssd. I really hope they keep the bios unlocked like that as while i love it for the nas, id really want it to be kept open for more

Does the HDMI Port work with a custom OS installed? Or do you perhaps require the custom kernel code for it?

5:00 I'm going on a limb here but, generally, when dealing with name brand stuff like that, if you need to bend, or struggle, like that with that kind of stuff that is supposed to be swappable, it generally means you are doing something wrong. Also, how long have you been using those Exos drives? Have you noticed any issues? How many hours did they have on them when you bought them? I recently ordered four used 16TB Exos drives for my NAS and was wondering if they'll give me headaches in the future.

would this be good for jellyfin or plex (maybe with docker)?

Wonder if you can install Synology DSM on it

Good video, i like the point comparing it against a homegrown solution. And pointing out what feels like Ugreens' selling point of this thing being easy to fire and forget. I think comparing this against other devices in the product segement is a good way to make a decision on if you should buy it or not. Also really like using apple as a comparison here, it feels like this nas was designed like one. The specs it has are too specific so it's hard to really compare it to another NAS in the same price point, if that makes any sense.

From the company that released IN 2023(!!!) not one, but two USB DAS boxes based on a SATA2 chipset...

Cool video, interesting to watch, a bit weird ending. I thought you'd roast the product but you actually praised some parts of it. And for such low price, and that it can be a game server I think it's pretty good.

A neat beginner NAS is QNAP, which has been around for years, is well established, and similarly priced.

That UI is VERY reminiscent of DSM. I have a basic Syno nas already deployed at my parents house, the main apps used with mine are mainly synology drive server (though they hardly use it), synology photos (is used quite heavily) and for the most part things just kinda work. mind you its used for primarily for file access in my case and on the local side smb is used with netatalk to advertise a time capsule for a macbook that lives on the lan. I do like these out of box solutions for when you cant be around to be a warranty for the device.

Good video! It's nice to see a new, hopeful competitor in the consumer NAS space, if only to keep the established brands on their toes, especially in terms of (at least optional) simplicity. I'm really interested in this, but as with most if not all pre-built NAS solutions sporting their own proprietary operating systems, it's the price. I understand a lot of R&D and then some goes into these, but for those prices I always hold back thinking I can build my own, with similar if not better specs, and I can know and decide beforehand how customizable, repairable and upgradeable my NAS box will be. Sure, I probably won't be able to build one that looks as exceptionally nice as this one, but if that's a priority, it's a bit wrong. Man, what is it with little boxes, chock-full of mass storage, with crazy connectivity and features that makes them seem so amazing? Purpose-built computers fascinate me. :D

13:07 ...darn.. you cut to the next clip just before we could see if the main ssd slot supports any other m.2 sizes lol - do you remember if it was compatible with 2230 m.2's?

Honestly it's like that cpu was made to run minecraft. The single p core is really all you need seeing as in game ticks are run on one core, which is where the heaviest workload is.

seems quite similar to Synology? Unfortunately, it does not seem to support zfs whereas debian 10 already does.

You should do a video comparing this product with Synology (similar/equivalent price point) mainly the available software, as well as support for 3rd party software.

great video, i found those price too expensive but the product look great

I have about three used HP workstations that I use to mess around with home lab stuff. Yes I could build one as a True NAS servers, but to be honest I've been looking for a compact and more power efficient way for storage, and this just thing came up just in time. At the discounted price I'm willing to take a bite for something more modern that looks good to boot :)

7:09 is that Times New Roman in their GUI?? Strange choice to use that instead of the system font.

Listen, I know there are like, Mac users who need something that works out of the box without a lot of thinking. But if you have an old desktop tower PC (or find one on the curb or for $50), can install some number of sata drives in open internal sata ports/open drive bays, and you can follow instuctions to install a OS (I sometimes use a quality usb thumb drive to boot from), then your cost is pretty much down to the drives you put in it! Trunas is easy. It is better for keeping old tech out of the landfill a little longer too, that makes YOU green. And keeps quite a bit of green in YOU pocket too:-)

When you say that you think it is way too expensive, do you think its the msrp or also the kickstarter price that is too expensive?

Kickstarter is definitely used as preorder with extra steps

Is it better then synolagy

To bad they can't figure out that these would make great home game server solutions. I know several dads and husbands that would be interested in some if that existed.

Does the Ugreen OS support native Plex with hardware transcoding?

It’s easier to take that back cover off if you use those hooked tweezers you have, and hook them inside the fan grill on the top corner and lever it up, then work down and do the same thing. Once you’ve taken this thing apart once, you can break it down a second time in about 10 minutes.

I was going to participate on their kickstarter (I've been bugged by their emails for months now) until I saw in a teeny tiny corner that people outside of the US or Germany can't pledge at all. I don't know the reason behind it since shipping stuff to Spain should be even easier than to germany but heck off. I'll find something else instead.

I bought one of these on a whim after waffling about what to buy for months. 6bay with Dual 10GBe and TB4 for $600 seemed like a no-brainer. QNAP's equivalent is $1800! Wasn't thinking about OS / Software ... if they'll honor the hardware warranty, TrueNAS seems like a good idea. But these don't arrive for Kickstarter backers until June so I'd be curious to see an update on how the OS is looking before then. Anyway, great vid, appreciate the straightforward and honest opinions.

Can I run Synology DSM on this?

Happy to see someone fighting for the little guy! I'm still trying to find my place in the tech world. I just want to help people and enjoy what I love for a living.

Hang off till released, its nice to say warranty wont be voided with other OS's like TrueNAS, Unraid, Open Media Vault, Promox but its currently reported that they are blocked from being installed on these review models. So you end up with their OS from somebody new to NAS's that will likely have limited apps and bugs, in other words you could spend years being a beta tester.

The fact that you didn't mention the main competitor of this product is insane, Synology. Someone who is buying this is not going to be building their own server and installing TrueNAS/unRAID/OME, they just want something that turns on and works.

The software for this looks quite...Terramaster esque. If it is the same underlying software - beware of connecting it to the internet. I'd be curious to take a look at the software running on there to see whether it's a reskin of TOS.

I brought a Synology DS 920+ for about $480 about little less than 2 years ago and even though it has less than $150 worth of computer parts, the secret sauce is really the software. Maybe if Ugreen invested enough money of making a good software, they can attract more buyers, by then, the cost of developing the NAS servers will go up. Though I wish that there are better CPU's than what synology can offer.

Maybe a CTRL-F12 to get into BIOS? I do not have a test unit but please try it.

I would rather have UGreen focus on making powerful but efficient NAS hardware that can support open source software a user would want to install on it---TrueNAS, ProxMox, OpenMediaVault, select linux distros, etc. to mention a few. Make the hardware easily accessible and user upgradable----not like how on this video where it was very difficult to get to the main boot drive. I have two Synology NAS'es----a DS218+ and a DS1621xs+ which has been running for years without missing a beat. I think I only rebooted them once in the past 5 years and that was only when I upgraded to DSM 7. While Synology comes with great software stack and is a solid choice for NAS'es... I don't like their recent stance of forcing/annoying users to use their own Synology branded HDDs/SSDs. Synology hardware is kind of pretty dated too so I'm more than happy to see more competition in the NAS department. One thing I'm curious though is how secure these UGreen NASes will be and how they will respond with updates when a vulnerability that affects it is discovered. 🤔

You know you've got it made when you're distributing binaries via MediaFire. 😂

I think the main thing about the kickstarter isnt to FUND it. Its to gauge interest and be a kind of "make to order" early run. If it succeeds well enough, theyll make it a full commercial product, I'm thinking. Otherwise, it'll just be an experiment that was partially or wholly subsidized, and they'll move on. Edit: ah, just saw thd update post~

Trying to be like Synology, but from watching this video.... The OS is no way ready for Prime Time. Going from Synology to Ugreen would be like 10 steps back.

That’s a lot of “no big deal” and “but that’s ok” to maintain positivity

Loved the teardown, gotta give UGREEN props for potential repairability and upgrades, even if it's against their intent. nice that replacing/upgrading the fan is also an option if silence has a high preference, such as in a shared office/bedroom option. I don't like that their site lists USB speeds as "theoretical". that's just the maximum USB spec, it would be nicer if they would guarantee 5 or 10 Gbps. It's also interesting, if confusing, for the front panel to be listed as supporting thunderbolt4 on the 6800/8800 models. Can we use a standard laptop dock for additional usb/sd ports? can it hose an e-GPU? Docker support would be wonderful if they can get it running well, and as user-friendly as the rest of their software appears to be, otherwise I'm in support of Proxmox. Would be in favor of a system setting for "reboot to bios", even if it includes a warning that your unit will no longer be supported for software warranty, only hardware failure.

I almost bought one of these, but I was put off by the price plus the specs being hidden so far down the page. Fortunately, a buddy of mine was scrapping his old gaming PC, so I wiped it and am creating a NAS/minecraft server. $10 per TB is pretty solid for those enterprise drives, so I might give one a shot. Probably better than the old WD passport I bought in 2016 lmao. Great video! Thanks for your insight

Dell engineers: make everything 2mm too small.

Instead of just having POP OS or some other Os on one drive you can install Ventoy on a drive and just pile in ISOs so you can boot to whatever you want whenever.

55 wats under load isn't bad. My 144hz "gaming" monitor draws 77.

Apparently the watchdog feature in the bios is responsible for the power off when trying to use pop OS. Hopefully you can demo how this device performs with other operating systems more easily now. EDIT: Didnt watch through the whole video.

Man I'd love to work with NAS-es for NAS things. Also I'd probably install Arch on it, btw.

I've been looking to get into the NAS / Plex server space the past few days, so in a way, I'm happy videos like these are being recommended to me...not because I want to buy this Ugreen NAS (not available in the UK anyway), But because it helps me to justify getting a job lot mini tower optiplex and some cheap high capacity hdd's, like mentioned in this video.

to be honest .. the build quality and the possibility to install my own OS on there would make me buy that thing on the spot .. if i diddnt already have a very capable solution .. i got a small xeon on a X11SSZ-TLN4F and an actual raid controller for 8 drives (4x 8TB, 4x4TB) .. and that definitely will stay with me for some more years .. and its using around 60w of power .. i wish it would use less .. but all in all 12 hard drives actually eat a lot more power than a 4 drive system will ..

I think that's fairly impressive. I'm not on the market for that form factor I really don't know how the price compares, but I like what I have seen so far about those cpus. My first NAS was an Atom 330...these are many many times faster.

Seems like Ugreen has increased the prices since you posted the video? I was looking at the 8 Bay one and it's $ 974 now instead of the 899 👀

There might be a watchdog circuit that "barks" and reboots the computer if it's running a custom OS that doesn't feed and pet it? Just a cursed thought, I suspect I'm wrong. Upd: you discovered this!

Can you test the power draw with TrueNAS installed?

Took me 6 hrs to build my qnap. had to format the drives.

Finally a nas with a higher end processor option. Time to buy and throw truenas on it. Homelabbers rejoice.

I don't think it's necessarily crazy expensive. But yeah, it's more expensive than a Desktop-style NAS. If I was buying a appliance-type NAS, I probably would get QNAP, Synology, etc. But seeing that I could potentially get something like this that's low power, small, and I can install TrueNAS on... Well, it's compelling. I probably shouldn't since I have a overpowered 1U box as my NAS.

Yeah I didn’t expect the software to be cream de la cream. If it does what I want good, then it’s good enough for the cheaper price. I’m using Infuse for all media anyway.

One of these might be the upgrade when I fill my ds920+, naturally would wait until the ship a lot more units and get more reviews. maybe the 6bay i5 model would be a powerhouse for plex