Sean Hollister is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

A decade ago, Google Photos changed photo storage for me forever — because I could search for those photos just by typing a few words. But that meant trusting Google cloud servers with my precious memories. Now, a new breed of network-attached storage (NAS) boxes promises to do the same and more with local AI, as long as you can afford to pay desktop PC prices for that storage box.

How much money are we talking? Try $1,699 for Ugreen’s new iDX6011 with 32GB of memory, $1,999 for a version with 64GB, or $2,599 for the iDX6011 Pro with 64GB. That’s just for the computing enclosure part — you’ll need to supply your own hard drives, with each holding up to six SATA hard drives and two NVMe SSDs for a maximum of 196TB of storage.

But if you do pay those prices and kit them out, Ugreen claims their Intel Core Ultra processors (the Ultra 5 125H, or an Ultra 7 255H in the Pro) can unlock these features:

Universal Search: Search files the way you think, not the way computers require. Users can describe concepts, scenes, ideas, or partial memories, and the system instantly retrieves relevant documents, photos, videos, and app content.

Uliya AI Chat: A built-in large language model enables users to ask natural questions about stored files, summarize documents, generate notes, interact with a private knowledge base entirely offline.

AI Album: Can identify Faces, Animals, Objects, Scenes and Text then automatically categorize and retrieve the correct images on command. Simply type “Dad on a bike” and relevant images are accessible instantly.

Voice Memos: Audio recordings can be uploaded and transcribed, translated, and summarized on-device. Ideal for meetings, interviews, classrooms, or family records.

AI File Organization: Documents, photos, and downloads are automatically sorted by type, date, and name the moment you upload them, saving time and keeping everything neat, clear, and instantly searchable.

I wonder how well they work and how long the box takes to fully ingest your files and retrieve results. It won’t be instant, particularly if you’ve got terabytes of content to sort through. They look like nice boxes in general, though, with integrated power supplies (no external brick), aluminum chassis, and magnetic mesh air filters for easy cleaning.

Ugreen claims that the iDX6011 is “ideal” for families and individual creators, while the Pro variant is more aimed at studios and production teams. Both offer a similar amount of processing power, both offer twin 10Gbps ethernet ports alongside twin 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 ports, many USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a full-size SD 4.0 slot. There’s even a PCIe x8 slot inside for an add-in card. But the Pro additionally has a small touchscreen to monitor usage and an OCuLink port for a faster dedicated connection to an external GPU — in case you want one of those for an additional AI boost.

The same eGPU plugs into the Pro model over OCulink.

In fact, Ugreen is announcing its own first eGPU enclosure at CES alongside the AI NAS boxes, one which it’s marketing toward gaming handhelds as well and which will apparently offer a USB-C connection too. We don’t have a price or release date for the eGPU yet, but the iDX6011 and 6011 Pro themselves are already on preorder with some huge early-bird discounts — as low as $999 for the entry-level model.

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• Sean Hollister

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