Ugreen NASync DH series review: Perfect home starter NAS beats iCloud on price

Price When Reviewed

$429.99

Best Prices Today: Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus

Whether it’s the kids’ videos, mum’s holiday photos or dad’s music collection, a family can quickly accumulate large amounts of data. Then there are the backups of all the devices found in a modern home. A Network Attached Storage (NAS) system is usually a better solution than directly connected hard drives or even SSDs because it’s a lot cheaper than renting expensive cloud storage and tidier and more convenient than hosting a stack of external hard drives.

NAS was once primarily the preserve of professionals, but is now increasingly finding its way into private households. This is partly due to the simpler set-up but also to falling prices—as seen in two of the Ugreen DH series of NAS drives: the DH2300 and DH4300 Plus.

From the entry-level $209 two-bay NASync DH2300 to more capacious $429 four-bay NASync DH4300 Plus the NASync DH series offers an extremely attractive price-performance ratio. With just two drives, the DH2300 is designed for home users with lower storage requirements. The somewhat slower processor, only 4GB RAM and 1Gb Ethernet are compromises. This should be bearable for the main home-user target group and it’s also sufficient as a backup server.

Before we describe our practical experiences, however, let’s first take a look at the technical data.

Thomas Bergbold

Reduced technology

In order to realise this price, Ugreen has made significant technical cuts compared to its higher-spec DXP range: read our Ugreen NASync DXP range review. This starts with the processor: the DH4300 Plus, for example, uses the 2GHz Rockchip RK3588C, an ARM-based eight-core processor. The 8GB of RAM is permanently installed and cannot be expanded. The DH2300 has the less-powerful RK3576 and has just 4G of RAM, but it’s still sufficient for the target home and small office market.

Two bays are available on the DH2300 for 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA hard drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs). Drives with up to 30TB per slot are suitable—so a maximum total capacity of 60TB. For many this should be more than enough for a private collection, but if not look to the four-bay DH4300 Plus that will offer up to 120TB. And if that’s not enough, each model has two USB-A ports and a USB-C port for external drives—but only with a speed of up to 5Gbps. There are no slots for M.2 SSDs as you’ll find in the more pro-level NASync DXP series.

The internal drives can be connected in a RAID for robust backup security. JBOD/Basic, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 are supported.

The connection to the network is made via either standard 1Gb Ethernet (DH2300) or a faster 2.5Gb port (DH4300 Plus), and the HDMI 4K/60Hz output typical for Ugreen NAS is also included. This is particularly practical for a low-power NAS for the living room.

Whether the built-in fan is too loud in the living room depends on personal preference— we found it to be pleasantly quiet, even for the 4-bay NAS. In contrast to the HDDs, it was not audible in the living room, especially in quiet fan mode.

Ugreen specifies a power consumption of 7W in idle mode, 22-30W in normal operation and up to 40W with full AI activity. We measured 26W during data transfer and 18.8W in idle mode with four 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives. When all drives are in idle mode, the measuring device even shows a fantastic 6.8W.

Simon Jary

Home help

With its special design with the drive bays from above and the associated small footprint: even the 6.1 x 6.1 x 8.5 inches (15.5 × 15.5 × 21.6cm) NASync DH4300 Plus cuts a compact figure and won’t dominate your living room. The DH2300 is, as you’d expect, even smaller at 5.9 x 3.9 x 8.4 inches (15.1 x 9.8 x 21.4cm).

Both are good looking, with the top-loading drive bays hidden below a discreet lid unlike the more industrial NASync DXP series that show off their bays as a badge of honor. That said, a version in a white (or even other colors) case might have been more sympathetic to some home decors rather than than the bachelor-pad gunmetal gray.

Simon Jary

The drives are still mounted in the drive frame in the old-fashioned way using screws (included); however, the rubber buffers make a very modern impression.

Setup is carried out with a well-designed wizard and is completed in just a few minutes. If desired, the link for access from the Internet can also be set up directly. This makes the NASsync DH4300 Plus accessible from anywhere and turns it into a private cloud.

Performance tests

For the practical test, we configured the installed drives in various RAID modes and measured the transfer rates in the network with Helios LAN Test.

Over a Gigabit Ethernet network, the Nasync DH4300 Plus achieved 92MBps write and 99MBps read in RAID 1. In RAID 0 the values were 94MBps (write) and 102MBps (read), in RAID 5 92MBps and 103MBps respectively. These are solid results, typical for the bandwidth of the older 1Gbit standard.

The 2.5Gb Ethernet connection delivers significantly higher speeds: Here we measured 136MBps for writing and 206MBps for reading in RAID 1. In RAID 0, the NAS achieves 150MBps (write) and 228MBps (read), in RAID 5 140MBps and 220MBps.

The fact that the CPU is only loaded with around 14-21% is a good sign. A few requirements must be met in order to achieve full performance in the network.

The DH2300 features a gigabit (1Gb) Ethernet port, which will match most home networks. The DH4300 Plus is graced with faster 2.5Gb Ethernet. You’ll only gain the speed benefit if your network is faster than 1GbE, but 2.5GbE is backwards compatible with Gigabit Ethernet so will work seamlessly either way. If you buy the DH2300 and later create a faster network, you can buy an adapter to create the speedier Ethernet connection.

If your home needs more Ethernet ports, for the DH4300 Plus a switch that supports the fast 2.5Gb Ethernet is important. Ugreen offers the UM106X for the home office at a price of $69.99 or £49.99. Next, don’t forget the cables. Even if Ugreen includes a proper shielded CAT 6 cable, CAT 7 or CAT 8 cables with a robust fabric sheath are the better choice.

There’s an app for everything

Ugreen offers a variety of helpful apps for its Ugo Pro operating system. The centrepiece is the control panel; this is where users and groups are managed, folders and shares are created and the performance of the fans and automatic switching on and off are controlled.

The Files app is comparable to the Finder and allows you to assign shares for folders. The “Storage” app is used to conveniently create and manage storage pools (RAID modes).

Simon Jary

Multimedia applications—like many other tools—can be conveniently installed via the App Centre. The Photos app, for example, offers AI-supported functions for managing and sharing pictures with friends and family. The Theatre app serves as a central point of contact for films and series and allows you to play your own media either directly via the Ugreen app for iOS or via HDMI output on a TV or monitor. An app for music management and an integrated DLNA server are of course also on board.

Thomas Bergbold

Other apps take care of synchronising data between Mac, iPad or iPhone and cloud storage.

This means that Ugreen now offers a wide range of applications for most tasks for which a NAS system can be used, including suitable apps for Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. Unfortunately, there is only an app for Android TV and not for other smart TV operating systems.

Ugreen

Is the performance enough?

Ugreen has several four-drive drives available, which means you are spoilt for choice. The Nasync DXP480T is a very compact high-end NAS that only supports M.2 NVMe SSDs and is therefore significantly more expensive. We reviewed the DXP480T earlier.

A direct comparison is more likely between the NASync DH4300 Plus and the NASync DXP4800 Plus, as both share four drive bays and the Ugo Pro operating system.

The comparison shows clear differences in hardware, performance, expandability and target groups. The NASync DXP4800 Plus is significantly more robust and has a considerably more powerful Intel Pentium Gold 8505 (12th Gen, Alder Lake) with 5 cores, 6 threads and up to 4.4GHz. The RAM can be expanded to up to 64GB and there is space for two additional M.2 NVMe SSDs with up to 8TB each.

The two-bay DXP equivalent is the NASync DXP2800, which is similarly more professional than the DH2300. Home users can rest assured that the DH series should be fine for all but the most demanding home media centers.

This makes the DXP4800 Plus and DXP2800 the right choices when hardware virtualization, x86 compatibility, Docker containers and more demanding applications—including Plex with hardware transcoding—are required.

Ugreen also ups the ante when it comes to interfaces: 10Gb Ethernet, faster USB-C and an SD card reader are available. However, this is reflected in a higher power consumption of around 42W in active mode.

Ugreen

Price: initially high but much cheaper than cloud storage

The 2-bay Ugreen DH2300 is competitively priced at $209 / £169.99, and the 4-bay DH4300 Plus at $429.99 / £359.99.

Remember that each drive comes empty—meaning you have to supply the hard drives. It would be an easier starter experience to be able to order the NAs boxes with drives to your desired capacity but Ugreen leaves you alone to separately buy the drives for yourself at this point.

Each 4TB Ironwolf HDD, for example, costs around $100, so factor that into your overall costs. Amazon sells the Ironwolf hard drives in a range of sizes: 4TB ($99); 8TB ($179), 12TB ($249), plus 16TB ($299), 20TB ($419), 24TB ($469) to 28TB ($569) as Ironwolf Pro. See Amazon UK for prices in that country, from £100. Other quiet drives to consider are the WD Red Plus and Toshiba N300.

One of the great things about NAS, however, is that even though the initial cost is higher, you’ll save a lot of money over time. The DH2300 plus two 6TB drives is a one-time purchase cost of around $520 for 12TB of NAS storage. Just one year of 12TB iCloud storage from Apple will cost you over $700 at $60/month. That saving will pay off in months rather than years.

The DH series offer the first truly affordable NAS solution for home users, and is powerful enough even for a small office setup.

Ugreen

Should you buy the Ugreen NASync DH series?

With the NASync DH range for home users or small office setups, Ugreen shows that targeted savings can even make sense in a private environment. The energy-saving ARM processor and the simpler hardware design are practical decisions that hardly have any disadvantages in the home.

On the other hand, the manufacturer has not changed the central strengths: the simple drive installation, the fast interfaces and the uncomplicated operation. The user interface is reminiscent of other NAS systems, but is deliberately designed to be clearer in many places. The setup wizard and various integrated help functions also help here.

Due to the ARM architecture, the software selection is somewhat limited, so you are primarily dependent on the apps from Ugreen. However, this is not a disadvantage for home use: from the private cloud to the media server to photo management with iPhone backup and AI support, the system offers everything that really counts in everyday life—and in a significantly improved form compared to our beta test of the NASync DXP480T.

The theater app transforms the NAS into a versatile media player on the TV thanks to the HDMI connection, while support for Home Assistant offers more smart home functions than Apple’s HomeKit—and still remains compatible.

With the NASync DH2800 and DH4300 Plus, Ugreen has succeeded in creating a convincing entry-level NAS without any major weaknesses, which we can particularly recommend for use in a private environment.