UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Introduction
With the new NASync iDX series, UGREEN is taking a different approach in 2026 than many traditional NAS manufacturers. Instead of focusing solely on data storage and backup functions, UGREEN is positioning the new models as "AI NAS"—that is, as a private AI cloud with local data processing, integrated LLM functions, and significantly more computing power than previously seen in the consumer NAS sector.
The series consists of several configurations, which differ primarily in RAM and features. While the regular iDX6011 is available with either 32 or 64 GB of RAM, the NASync iDX6011 Pro we tested is clearly aimed at power users. Here, UGREEN equips the system with a full complement of features, including an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor, 64 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, two 10 Gb Ethernet ports, Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 4.0 expansion, and an additional OCuLink connector for external GPUs.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Design and Build Quality
The NASync iDX6011 Pro already stands out from the typical consumer NAS due to its size (212 × 349 × 260 mm) and weight of over nine kilograms (without drives). Compared to the smaller DXP4800 Plus, which we tested some time ago (Right this way) had, the case offers noticeably more space for cooling, expansions and the overall more powerful hardware.
Visually, UGREEN remains true to its established design language. The casing is understated and, apart from the front display, dispenses with any striking elements. UGREEN uses a mix of aluminum, steel, and plastic for the materials. Overall, the build quality makes a high-end impression, which is to be expected in a device costing over €2000.
The front panel features six hot-swappable drive bays. These new bays differ slightly from previous NASync models and are easier to open. 3,5-inch hard drives are installed tool-free, while 2,5-inch drives require screws. The bays can also be locked. With the DXP4800 Plus, we encountered an issue where some bays had minimal play and vibrated audibly during hard drive access. In contrast, everything in the iDX6011 Pro is more securely mounted.
Next to the drive bays is a vertical 3,7-inch touchscreen display. System information such as CPU usage, temperatures, network usage, and drive status can be displayed directly on it. The display is sharp and easily readable even from oblique angles. However, its practical use in everyday life is limited. Customization options are scarce, and even security-related functions like restarting or shutting down can be performed directly via the display without requiring a password.
The connectivity options are extensive. The front panel features two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB 3.2 port, and an SD card reader. The rear panel includes two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, three USB ports (two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.2), and an OCuLink port. Inside, there are two M.2 slots with PCIe 4.0 and one PCIe 4.0 x8 slot for expansion cards. This provides more connectivity options than typical consumer NAS systems, making it suitable for use as a workstation.
The cooling system is also more elaborate than in smaller NASync models. Two large 120 mm fans cool the drives, and there's also a separate internal cooling system for the processor with heat pipes and small blower fans. The system remains relatively quiet at idle. Under load, the cooling system becomes audible, but overall it remains less noticeable than many rack or workstation solutions with similar performance. Only the fan of the integrated 300-watt power supply occasionally stands out due to its slightly higher operating noise.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Hardware and Upgradeability
Inside, the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H CPU is at work, a processor primarily known from high-performance notebooks and mini-PCs. This processor combines six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two additional low-power cores. It also features an integrated Intel Arc 140T GPU and a dedicated NPU for AI calculations. UGREEN claims a total of up to 96 TOPS of combined AI performance (CPU + GPU + NPU).
Another major difference compared to traditional NAS systems is the 64 GB of LPDDR5X RAM that comes pre-installed. However, the choice of LPDDR5X also has its drawbacks. The RAM is soldered in place, doesn't support ECC, and cannot be upgraded later. While this shouldn't pose a practical problem for most users with 64 GB, an upgrade option would have been desirable for a NAS in this price range.
The network hardware, on the other hand, is a positive feature. Instead of cheaper standard controllers, UGREEN uses two fast 10-Gbit controllers of the type Aquantia AQtion AQC113.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Software and UGOS Pro
The operating system used is UGREEN's own UGOS Pro, which is based on Linux or Debian. A lot has clearly changed since our initial test of the DXP4800 Plus. While UGOS seemed quite unfinished back then and lacked features in many areas, the system now makes a more stable and mature impression.
Initial setup is now pleasantly straightforward. The UGREEN NAS app automatically detects the NAS on the network and then guides you through the process step by step. This includes RAID configuration, user management, and network settings. Unlike some competing systems, the entire process works without complicated intermediate steps, meaning the NAS is set up in just a few minutes.
The web interface is visually very similar to Synology DSM or QNAP QTS. Icons, window layout, and menu navigation should be immediately familiar to users of other NAS systems. Applications can be opened and moved in separate windows simultaneously, making UGOS feel almost like a classic desktop operating system.
In everyday use, the interface runs smoothly overall. The powerful hardware of the iDX6011 Pro is a noticeable help here. Even with multiple applications open, Docker containers running, or file transfers happening simultaneously, the user interface remained responsive most of the time during testing. Nevertheless, it's still apparent in some areas that UGOS's software hasn't quite reached the level of established systems like DSM.
This starts right after the initial setup, where you're bombarded with wizards, prompts, and pop-ups. While this guided tour might be helpful for beginners, experienced NAS users are likely to find it more of a hindrance than a help. Additionally, UGOS constantly displays a small helper wizard, which can sometimes only be closed after certain steps have been completed. This feels unnecessarily intrusive.
Minor inconsistencies are still noticeable. Some menus are not fully translated, or individual terms appear inconsistent. While this isn't technically critical, overall UGOS doesn't quite reach the level of polish one would expect in this price range.
The app selection, however, has improved. Besides classic NAS functions like file management, backup, and media management, UGOS now also supports Docker and virtual machines. Applications such as Home Assistant, Pi-hole, Jellyfin, and Paperless can be installed and run simultaneously without major limitations. Thanks to 64 GB of RAM and the powerful Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, the system barely breaks a sweat, even with multiple containers running concurrently.
Linux VMs ran stably and with sufficient performance in the test. Even smaller Windows instances are generally possible without any problems. While UGOS doesn't yet reach the feature set of specialized virtualization solutions like Proxmox or VMware, its implementation is already sufficient for typical homelab or developer scenarios.
The iDX6011 Pro is also very well suited as a media server. The integrated Intel Arc GPU supports hardware-accelerated transcoding, meaning even high-resolution 4K content is no problem with Plex or Jellyfin. Thanks to HDMI 2.1, the NAS can theoretically even be connected directly to a TV, although UGOS is not yet fully designed as a classic HTPC interface.
There are also hardly any limitations regarding supported network protocols. SMB, NFS, FTP, Rsync, WebDAV, and SSH are all supported. Additionally, UGREEN now offers working two-factor authentication. However, features like native volume encryption are still missing.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: AI features and Uliya in everyday use
UGREEN is marketing the NAS not just as a classic network storage device, but as a local AI platform with its own LLM integration called "Uliya". It supports features such as intelligent file search, automatic photo recognition, speech transcription, document analysis, and a local AI chatbot.
Unlike traditional cloud services, all data is processed locally on the NAS, without personal files leaving external servers. This is a perfectly understandable approach for sensitive documents, photos, or voice recordings.
In the background, UGREEN doesn't rely on a completely proprietary AI model, but rather combines several well-known open-source models with its own Uliya interface. At the time of testing, Qwen3 was used as a language model, along with the multimodal model "Uliya-v 2B". Additionally, UGOS utilizes further specialized models for image recognition, OCR, and speech transcription.
Setting up the AI functions wasn't entirely smooth during testing. The initial installation alone required several gigabytes of additional downloads for models and AI services. Even after that, the integration still seemed incomplete in many areas. The intelligent search, in particular, frequently delivered no results or only unreliable ones. In some cases, the photo management system recognized simple terms like "dog," but failed with slightly modified search queries or plural forms. While automatic image recognition works in principle, its quality doesn't yet reach the level of Google Photos, Apple Photos, or Synology's current image management software.
The actual AI chat, on the other hand, functioned largely reliably. Responses are generated locally and thus remain entirely on the NAS. However, in direct comparison to current cloud models like ChatGPT or Claude, it quickly becomes apparent that the local AI works more slowly and responds less precisely. Qwen achieved approximately 8 tokens per second, which is just about sufficient for a smooth reading flow. Optionally, a cloud connection can also be activated. In this case, Uliya uses, among other things, GPT-4.1-mini.
It's also interesting to note that the integrated NPU of the Intel Core Ultra was barely used in the test. Many AI processes ran primarily on the CPU instead. One would have expected more optimization from the new hardware platform, which Intel certainly offers with its OpenVINO toolkit for AI applications.
Another limitation concerns the choice of models themselves. Unlike classic Ollama setups or open AI platforms, UGREEN currently does not allow the free installation of custom LLMs within UGOS. Users are entirely dependent on the models officially provided by UGREEN. For technically savvy users, this seems unnecessarily restrictive, as the iDX6011 Pro's hardware would easily have enough power for larger or more specialized models.
Those wishing to use their own AI models must resort to Docker containers, virtual machines, or alternative operating systems. This is currently the biggest difference between the very powerful hardware and the still comparatively limited UGOS operating system.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Storage Management and RAID
The drives are set up using the storage manager integrated into UGOS. The usual RAID configurations are supported, including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10, as well as JBOD and single-disk operation. The available file systems are ext4 and Btrfs. For our tests, we primarily used ext4. However, Btrfs offers some functional advantages, such as snapshots and advanced recovery features.
Creating a new storage pool is generally straightforward. The actual initialization of the RAID array takes a considerable amount of time with six drives. While the NAS remains usable during this process, background RAID synchronization processes continued to run for several hours during testing.
The integrated drive overview is useful, directly displaying temperatures, SMART values, and the general health of the drives. The two NVMe SSDs are also flexible in their use. Besides classic SSD caching, they can alternatively be used as an independent storage pool, for example, for virtual machines, Docker, or particularly fast project folders.
ZFS support is still missing. This would have been particularly interesting for a NAS in this performance class, especially since the processor and RAM are easily sufficient. Users who specifically want to use ZFS will therefore have to resort to alternative operating systems such as TrueNAS or Unraid.
UGREEN does, however, offer a pleasingly open hardware interface. Installing alternative NAS operating systems generally worked without problems in our tests. At the time of testing, however, UGREEN did not yet provide an official recovery image for UGOS. Anyone wishing to experiment with alternative operating systems should therefore definitely create a complete backup of the pre-installed system beforehand.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Performance and Benchmarks
The sequential transfer rates in CrystalDiskMark remained consistently very close to the practical limit of 10 GbE. With a 1GB test data set, the NAS achieved approximately 845 MB/s read and write speeds. With a larger 16GB test data set, the values dropped slightly to about 770 MB/s read and 810 MB/s write.
In everyday use, this level of performance was also confirmed. Large individual files, such as 60GB video archives, could be written to the NAS at a stable speed of around 980 MB/s and read back at up to 1,1 GB/s, making the iDX6011 Pro perfectly suitable for large media projects or backups. Over Thunderbolt 4, individual file transfers even reached peak speeds of up to 1,7 GB/s, allowing the NAS to be used almost like a DAS system.
However, the transfer of many small files revealed a more nuanced picture. A large library with several thousand files sometimes only reached around 300 MB/s when reading. While this is generally within the normal range for HDD-based RAID systems, occasional unexpected drops in speed occurred, especially when SSD caching was enabled. RAID 0 and RAID 5 configurations, in particular, showed inconsistent results in several tests. In some cases, the system was even faster without SSD caching than with it enabled.
The system's aggressive RAM caching was also very noticeable. Thanks to the 64 GB of LPDDR5X, the NAS buffers many write operations entirely in RAM. This makes file transfers appear extremely fast and virtually lag-free. However, the actual write operations to the hard drives sometimes continued for a significantly longer period in the background.
The overall system stability under load was a very positive aspect. Even during parallel benchmarks, Docker containers, background processes, and AI functions, the NAS remained stable and responsive. Surprisingly, CPU utilization often remained low. Many typical NAS tasks only used a single-digit percentage of the Core Ultra 7's resources. For classic backup or media server tasks, this hardware is almost overkill.
UGREEN NASync iDX6011 Pro: Power consumption
As expected, the iDX6011 Pro is not among the most energy-efficient NAS systems. The hardware it uses is simply too powerful for that.
In idle mode, power consumption in the test, depending on the drives used, was usually between 45 and 55 watts. Under load, during large file transfers, RAID synchronization, or Docker and VM workloads, consumption typically rose to around 70 to 90 watts. Short-term peak loads of over 100 watts were also measurable.
For a system in this performance class, the overall energy consumption remains within the expected range. However, compared to traditional consumer NAS or ARM systems, the energy consumption is noticeably higher. Anyone running the NAS around the clock should therefore definitely consider power consumption during the planning phase.
