Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus Review

I’ve been an enormous fan of Ugreen for the previous few years, with them constantly launching nice Energy Supply chargers, transportable energy banks, and USB/Thunderbolt docks.

One product vary I’ve been desirous to check out is the brand new Ugreen NAS gadgets. I’m a eager homelabber who’s at present working two mini PCs working Proxmox and two TerraMaster NAS gadgets working Unraid.

Admittedly, my curiosity within the Ugreen merchandise has been extra in direction of the x64-based fashions working Intel CPUs on account of their flexibility on what you’ll be able to run, however when Ugreen contacted me about reviewing the brand new ARM primarily based NASync DH4300 Plus, I used to be blissful to attempt it out.

The Community Connected Storage market has lengthy been dominated by a number of key gamers. Manufacturers like Synology and QNAP have constructed robust reputations over a few years, providing polished working methods and in depth software ecosystems. For a lot of dwelling customers and small companies, these manufacturers have been the default selection.

Nevertheless, in recent times, extra reasonably priced choices have grow to be more and more widespread. I believe TerraMaster have stood out as a fantastic reasonably priced choice, however extra not too long ago Ugreen and Minisforum have been making waves on this phase.

Associated Evaluations

Specification

Specification	Particulars
SKU	65653
Mannequin	DH4300 Plus
Drive Bays	4-Bay (SATA)
Working System	UGOS Professional
CPU Mannequin	RK3588C
CPU Model & Structure	Rockchip ARM 8 Cores 2.4 GHz
Reminiscence (RAM)	8 GB LPDDR4X
Flash Reminiscence (System Disk)	eMMC 32 GB
SATA Drive Bays	4
RAID	JBOD / Primary / RAID 0 / RAID 1 / RAID 5 / RAID 6 / RAID 10
Most Storage	120 TB (4× 30 TB)
LAN Ports (RJ45)	1× 2.5 GbE
PCIe Enlargement	–
Excessive-Pace USB Ports (Entrance Panel)	1× USB-C (5 Gb/s), 2× USB-A (5 Gb/s every)
HDMI	4K 60 Hz
Product Dimensions	155 × 155 × 215.7 mm
Energy Consumption	12 V / 6 A = 38W

UGREEN NASync DH4300 Plus Options

The DH4300 Plus is a four-bay Community Connected Storage machine designed for dwelling workplaces, small groups, and households with rising information wants. It acts as a high-performance dwelling information hub and a software for skilled collaboration.

Core {Hardware} and Efficiency

On the coronary heart of the DH4300 Plus is an 8-core Rockchip RK3588C processor with a most frequency of two.4 GHz. This ARM-based CPU is constructed on an 8 nm course of. For multitasking and processing, the system is supplied with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. The system itself runs from a 32GB eMMC inside drive.

Storage Capability and Knowledge Administration

The machine options 4 drive bays which can be suitable with each 3.5-inch and a pair of.5-inch SATA drives. This permits for a complete storage capability of as much as 120TB, assuming 30TB drives are utilized in every bay.

To handle the information throughout these drives, the DH4300 Plus helps a variety of RAID configurations, providing selections between efficiency and information redundancy. Supported modes embrace:

• JBOD and Primary
• RAID 0 (Striping for efficiency)
• RAID 1 (Mirroring for redundancy)
• RAID 5 (Striping with parity for a stability of efficiency and single-drive failure safety)
• RAID 6 (Striping with double parity for two-drive failure safety)
• RAID 10 (A mixture of striping and mirroring for prime efficiency and redundancy)

Connectivity and Community Pace

For community connectivity, the NAS features a 2.5GbE LAN port, which facilitates switch speeds of as much as 312.5MB/s. This pace is considerably sooner than typical cloud add charges.

Bodily connectivity choices embrace:

• Two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports
• One USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port
• An HDMI port that helps direct media playback to a show at a decision of 4K 60Hz

Software program and Person Expertise

The DH4300 Plus runs on the UGOS Professional working system, which is designed for simple use. The preliminary setup course of is guided and may be accomplished in below 10 minutes. An NFC Fast Connection function permits a smartphone to connect with the NAS with a easy faucet.

Administration is dealt with by means of a single, all-in-one UGREEN NAS app that centralises file administration, photograph backups, and media streaming. The software program additionally supplies sensible capabilities similar to automated photograph classification, OCR for textual content recognition in pictures, and a sensible film hub. For extra superior customers, the machine gives Docker help, permitting for the usage of customized functions.

Safety Protocols

The machine is constructed across the precept of native storage, retaining person information on a bodily machine they personal to keep away from the dangers related to third-party cloud platforms.

A number of layers of safety are included:

• Transmission Encryption: Knowledge is protected in transit utilizing protocols like TSL/SSL, RSA, and AES.
• Account Safety: Person accounts are protected with high-strength SHA256 password hashing and the choice for multi-factor authentication by way of e-mail.
• Safety Supervisor: A built-in perform within the app supplies 24/7 real-time risk monitoring and permits for scheduled virus scans to guard information.
• Native Account: For customers who don’t require distant entry, an area account can be utilized, which doesn’t require an web connection for verification.

Unboxing / Design

The Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus arrives in easy packaging. Inside, you’ll find the NAS unit itself, an influence adapter, a community cable, and a few screws for mounting 2.5-inch drives. The unit is compact, with dimensions of 155 x 155 x 215.7 mm, making it solely barely bigger than the 4 3.5-inch exhausting drives it’s designed to carry. This small footprint is a substantial benefit for customers with restricted area.

The chassis is constructed primarily of plastic, however it feels strong and well-assembled. The design is minimalist and fashionable. A magnetic high panel covers the drive bays, which may be simply eliminated to entry the drives. This tool-less entry to the highest cowl is handy.

Drives are put in vertically into the chassis. Every drive is mounted onto a plastic tray that then slides into place, connecting on to the SATA backplane. The trays themselves really feel considerably plasticky and primary, however they’re useful. They incorporate small rubber grommets and comes which seemingly assist to dampen drive vibrations and cut back operational noise. One notable omission is the shortage of any bodily locks on the drive bays. Whereas not a important function for many dwelling customers, locks can stop unintentional removing of a drive, particularly in a family with youngsters.

Cooling is dealt with by a single giant fan situated on the base of the unit, which attracts air by means of air flow grilles on the perimeters and the rear of the highest panel. This design goals to drag cool air over the drives and inside parts earlier than exhausting it.

Set Up

Organising the DH4300 Plus is a straightforward course of, clearly designed with newbies in thoughts, although it did truly catch me out.

Usually, with any networking product, I naturally scan my community and browse to the IP of the machine and set it up from there. With Ugreen, I had to make use of the app to determine the NAS and begin the set up course of.  

The UGOS Professional setup wizard guides you thru all the course of. It prompts you to create a Ugreen account for distant entry, or alternatively, a local-only account. You’re then guided by means of the method of making a storage pool and quantity. A storage pool is the underlying group of bodily disks configured in a particular RAID sort, whereas a quantity is the usable cupboard space created on that pool. The wizard supplies clear explanations of the totally different RAID choices and should suggest a selected sort, similar to RAID 5, for a stability of capability and safety with three or extra drives.

As soon as the preliminary set up was carried out, the IP was absolutely accessible.

UGOS Professional Person Interface / Settings

UGOS Professional is Ugreen’s proprietary NAS working system. The interface is fashionable, with a clear design that takes inspiration from cellular working methods. It presents a desktop-like setting throughout the net browser, with icons for main functions like File Supervisor, App Middle, and Management Panel.

The Management Panel supplies entry to all system settings, together with person administration, community configuration, storage administration, and {hardware} settings. Whereas it covers all of the important capabilities, it lacks the deep, granular management discovered in additional mature methods like Synology’s DSM or QNAP’s QTS. For example, file sharing permissions are useful however extra primary than what a sophisticated person or small enterprise may require.

UGOS Installable Apps

The App Middle is the place you’ll be able to set up extra functions to increase the performance of the NAS. The library of native apps is at present fairly small in comparison with opponents. It contains important Ugreen-developed apps for photograph administration, cloud drive syncing, and media streaming. In style third-party apps like Plex will not be accessible as native installations. The restricted dimension of the app library is among the most important trade-offs when selecting this NAS.

It has many of the necessary issues I’d need, together with

The total checklist of apps is at present simply 27 and contains the preinstalled apps. The total checklist contains:

1. Cloud Drives
2. Management Panel (pre-installed, clearly)
3. DLNA
4. Docker
5. Downloads
6. File Model Explorer
7. Recordsdata
8. Firefox
9. Residence Assistant
10. Jellyfin
11. Logs
12. Music
13. On-line Workplace
14. Pictures
15. qBittorrent
16. SAN Supervisor
17. Safety
18. SiYuan – SiYuan is a privacy-first private information administration system, supporting fine-grained block-level reference and Markdown WYSIWYG.
19. Snapshot
20. Storage
21. Help
22. Sync & Backup
23. Job Supervisor
24. TextEdit
25. Theatre
26. Common Search
27. Vault

There are some large omissions for widespread apps, together with:

• Adblocking with PiHole/Adguard
• Recursive DNS with Unbound and so on
• Extra obtain instruments similar to Sonarr/Radarr/SabNZB
• A reverse proxy similar to Traefik
• NextCloud
• Plex

Docker

The inclusion of Docker help is a significant benefit that helps to offset the small native app library. Docker permits customers to run 1000’s of third-party functions in light-weight, remoted environments referred to as containers. For customers with some technical information, this opens up a world of prospects.

As beforehand talked about, there isn’t any Plex below the installable apps, however there’s the favored linuxserver/plex picture accessible in Docker. Equally, you will have Sonarr, Radarr and SabNZB, that are all widespread choices for media lovers who host their very own media.

File Switch Speeds

With its 2.5GbE community port, the DH4300 Plus is able to spectacular file switch speeds. In testing, with a RAID 5 array of 4 exhausting drives, the NAS can comfortably saturate the two.5GbE connection, attaining sequential learn and write speeds near the theoretical most of round 300 MB/s. It is a noticeable enchancment over a 1GbE connection, which tops out at round 110-120 MB/s. Giant file transfers which may have taken a number of minutes on an older NAS may be accomplished rather more rapidly, bettering the general person expertise.

Apps

Jellyfin / Plex Efficiency / {Hardware} Decoding

Plex doesn’t have a local app throughout the OS, however the third-party apps within the Ugreen apps retailer are all Docker apps.  

Plex has misplaced numerous favour with customers not too long ago, so I used this as a chance to take a look at Jellyfin.

The app installs simply; you simply must ensure you outline your folders at present and don’t transfer them.

I discovered that I used to be capable of stream a 4K HEVC HDR film with no points, which is spectacular for such an reasonably priced NAS.

The true take a look at of a NAS’s media capabilities comes with transcoding, which is the method of changing a file on-the-fly to a format suitable with the playback machine. The DH4300 Plus handles 1080p and 4K transcoding properly. It may well transcode a 4K file all the way down to 1080p for playback on a cell phone or older TV with out vital stuttering, though CPU utilization shall be excessive. The {hardware} transcoding engine on the ARM processor is efficient, although it will not be as universally suitable or as highly effective as Intel’s Fast Sync know-how present in x64-based NAS gadgets.

The machine is marketed with 8K help, and whereas it might probably play an 8K file natively by way of its HDMI output, CPU utilization sits at a excessive 70-75%. Trying to transcode an 8K file will push the CPU to 100% and end in a poor playback expertise. For all sensible functions, this ought to be thought of a really succesful 4K media NAS.

Cloud Drives

One function I discovered helpful and simple to arrange was the cloud drive integration. You may hyperlink OneDrive and Google Drive and arrange syncing in both one route or each, and have the sync scheduled or in actual time. Whereas I like the comfort of cloud drives, there’s at all times the chance that your account will get hacked or locked out, and I just like the reassurance of a self-hosted backup.

Picture App

The built-in photograph administration software supplies primary organisation and AI-powered categorisation. After pointing it at your photograph library, the AI processes pictures to determine individuals, pets, automobiles, and varied objects.

The facial recognition works fairly properly after preliminary coaching. You may tag individuals, and the system learns to recognise them in subsequent images. Accuracy isn’t excellent – count on to manually confirm and proper some identifications – however it’s useful sufficient for primary organisation.

The interface permits looking by date, location (if EXIF information contains GPS), albums, or AI-generated classes. Computerized backup from cellular gadgets works easily by way of the companion app, making it simple to get images off your cellphone and onto the NAS routinely.

In comparison with devoted options like Google Pictures or Apple Pictures, it’s extra primary. The AI isn’t as subtle, the search performance is restricted, and there’s no automated enhancement or modifying options. However for a locally-hosted resolution that retains your images non-public, it does the job adequately.

On-line Workplace

UGOS Professional contains primary on-line workplace performance for viewing and modifying paperwork, spreadsheets, and displays. This makes use of open supply parts fairly than being a fully-featured workplace suite.

For mild modifying duties – updating a spreadsheet, reviewing a doc, making fast presentation modifications – it’s sufficient. The interface is useful with out being polished, and compatibility with Microsoft Workplace codecs is suitable for easy paperwork.

I wouldn’t suggest this for critical productiveness work. The function set is restricted, efficiency lags behind devoted options, and complicated paperwork don’t at all times render appropriately. Consider this as a comfort function for infrequent edits fairly than a correct workplace suite alternative.

qBittorrent

The qBittorrent implementation, put in by way of the app retailer or Docker, supplies a succesful obtain shopper. The net interface is the usual qBittorrent UI, which is useful if not notably enticing.

Obtain efficiency is strong, restricted by your web connection fairly than the NAS. The system handles a number of simultaneous torrents with out points, and the 8GB RAM supplies sufficient area for typical obtain queue administration.

Storage efficiency is greater than adequate for torrent operations. Even throughout heavy obtain exercise with a number of energetic torrents, system responsiveness remained good.

Energy Draw / Vitality Effectivity / Noise

One of many fundamental promoting factors of this NAS is the very low energy consumption of ARM primarily based RK3588C processor compared to costlier Intel/AMD primarily based methods.

It’s formally rated at 38W.

• With no exhausting drives put in and the system idle, it attracts simply 4.6-4.7 watts.
• With 4 4TB exhausting drives put in and idling, energy consumption rises to a nonetheless modest 21-22 watts.
• Beneath a heavy load with each the CPU and exhausting drives being accessed, the ability draw peaks at round 34-35 watts. These figures are glorious, making the DH4300 Plus a cheap selection for an always-on dwelling server.

Because of the energy-efficient course of, the general noise produced by the NAS is minimal. I’ve had it in my workplace all through this evaluate and have been unable to listen to the followers over my pc. The one factor I often hear is a slight exhausting disk noise.

Worth and Different Choices

The Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus has an RRP of £360, and on the time of writing, Ugreen had it on their web site for £306 whereas Amazon has it for £324.

Ugreen then has:

• NASync DXP4800
  • RRP: £480 – Amazon: £410
  • Chipset / CPU: Intel N100
  • Storage: 4x 3.5” bays + 2x M.2 NVMe slots
• NASync DXP4800 Plus
  • RRP: £600 – Amazon: £540
  • Chipset / CPU: Intel Pentium Gold 8505 5-Core
  • Storage: 4x 3.5” bays + 2x M.2 NVMe slots + 128GB system SSD
  • Networking: 1x10GbE + 1x 2.5GbE

Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus vs TerraMaster F4-212

TerraMaster might be the perfect different model, and the TerraMaster F4-212 is the closest in worth.

The TerraMaster F4-212 is powered by the quad-core Realtek 1619B and is obtainable in 1GB or 2GB variants. The 2GB variant is a contact cheaper than the Ugreen at £300.

It then has 4 drive bays and a single gigabit Ethernet port.

The chipset on the Ugreen is considerably higher:

Characteristic	Realtek RTD1619B	Rockchip RK3588C
CPU	4× Cortex-A55 (≈ as much as 2.0 GHz)	4× Cortex-A76 (≈ as much as 2.4 GHz) + 4× Cortex-A55 (≈1.8 GHz)
GPU	Mali-G57 (typically MP1)	Mali-G610 MP4
NPU	~1.6 TOPS (device-dependent)	As much as ~6 TOPS
Video decode/encode	4K60 (AV1 10-bit, H.265/H.264 and so on.); HDR10/10+; Dolby Imaginative and prescient by way of VS10 on supported packing containers	8K60 decode, as much as 8K30 encode; multi-display (HDMI 2.1/DP/eDP)
I/O highlights	HDMI 2.1 TX, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.x	PCIe 3.0 (x4/2×x2/4×x1), PCIe 2.1/SATA/USB 3.x, wealthy CSI/DSI/DP/HDMI

The Ugreen, due to this fact, has a lot better specs for the worth, however the TerraMaster is a extra mature system and once I reviewed the 2-bay F2-212, there have been 42 functions accessible to put in, considerably greater than Ugreen. Admittedly, lots of them didn’t have a lot attraction, however they did have Plex and Emby vs Jellyfin, then some helpful instruments like AOMEI Backupper, Portainer (for higher Docker administration), VPN Server, plus different helpful apps.

Terramaster additionally has TOS group apps, which embrace issues like Sonarr, however the web site that hosts the apps has restricted entry except you pay a excessive month-to-month price.

Personally, for these ARM-based NAS gadgets, I’d go for the Ugreen, which has barely much less performance from the apps however a lot better efficiency.
Total

Whereas I usually desire a extra absolutely featured NAS OS like Unraid, I’ve rapidly grown to love the Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus.

It’s a primary NAS with a restricted variety of simply installable apps, however it does cowl most issues.

It is vitally quiet and extremely vitality environment friendly, which makes it very interesting for anybody wanting to cut back the general value of possession.

 The restricted variety of apps has labored flawlessly to this point. I’ve been impressed with the photograph options, the cloud drive, and the efficiency from Jellyfin.  

The first weak spot of the machine is its software program. UGOS Professional is a younger working system. Whereas it’s clear, fashionable, and simple for newbies to make use of, it lacks the depth, customisation choices, and in depth app library of its extra established rivals. The reliance on Docker to increase its performance is an effective resolution, however it might be a barrier for much less technical customers.

For a first-time NAS purchaser, a house person on the lookout for a succesful media server and backup machine, or somebody prioritising vitality effectivity and affordability over a extra mature software program ecosystem, the Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus is a superb and easy-to-recommend selection. It gives a improbable basis of {hardware} that Ugreen can construct upon as its UGOS Professional software program continues to develop.