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Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: 30-second review
It’s not well known that Ugreen had NAS boxes before they launched the Kickstarter for their DXP line, but these were only available in China. That makes the new DH series the second global NAS release, but it has been available in China for a while.
With the DXP series now considered one of the best premium NAS options around, and new AI models in the pipeline, Ugreen has shifted its focus away from entry-level NAS.
The Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus is a basic four-bay NAS that runs the same UGOS Pro operating system used by the DXP machines, but with fewer features in this package.
Where previous designs used Intel processors, this one has opted for an ARM SoC, resulting in a lower-power consumption NAS.
This choice has limited the DH4300 in several respects, such as its non-upgradeable memory, no M.2 SSDs for caching, and lack of Thunderbolt support. However, the SoC is eight-core and offers plenty of performance to handle the four conventional drives and a 2.5GbE LAN port.
Ugreen’s prior four-bay, the NASync DXP4800 Plus, had an Intel 5-core CPU, 10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN ports, expandable memory, M.2 slots, but no Thunderbolt. However, that’s a much more costly option, being nearly $600, rather than the $370 that the DH4300 is priced at.
The alternative from Ugreen is the standard DXP4800, which uses a much less powerful Intel N100 CPU with 16GB of RAM, but has dual 2.5GbE LAN ports and dual M.2 SSD slots. But those extra features cost another $134.
Therefore, if you don’t need that level of performance, the DH4300 delivers a good file-serving and media-management experience for a lower outlay.
Where this machine is probably less suited is for developers, since with the maximum memory of 8GB of LPDDR4X, it won’t support many apps or Docker containers.
You could run a few, but other machines in Ugreen’s DXP series will be better in those roles.
Overall, the Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus offers a solid and user-friendly NAS, which, depending on the drives installed, can provide a total capacity of up to 120 TB. If you don’t care for the UGOS Pro operating system that comes pre-installed, it’s possible to use an alternative, such as UNRaid or TrueNAS, if you want to install those.
This might not be the best NAS device for home and small business users, but the functionality and build quality you get seem impressive for its cost.
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? From $366/€343.99
- When is it out? Available now in the US and Europe
- Where can you get it? US customers can get it directly or via Amazon
Ugreen has recently been offering discounts on its NAS, and even though it’s a relatively new product, there is a cost reduction on the Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus, making it $86 less than the MSRP of $429.99, at $365.99 for US customers. Additionally, you can currently receive an extra $22 off for being a new customer.
Those prices are direct from Ugreen, but they can also be found for $364.99 on Amazon via the Ugreen store.
For European customers, the cost is €343.99, and a 5% discount is available for providing your email address. For some curious reason, the DH4300 Plus isn’t on the UK Ugreen website, but I’m sure it will be there soon. However, it is on Amazon.co.uk for £360.
The budget four-bay NAS market is well-stocked, and the primary competition comes from the QNAP TS-433-4G-US, which features an ARM Cortex-A55 quad-core 2.0GHz processor with 4 GB DDR4 RAM and typically sells for $379 (diskless).
However, those wishing to splash $399.99 can find the Synology DS423. A machine that only comes with 2GB of RAM, but it has dual 1GbE LAN ports and a four-core ARM CPU made by Realtek. What you are paying for here is the Synology DSM operating system and apps, because the hardware isn’t truly competitive.
Probably the most challenging product comes directly from Ugreen, the DXP4800 (not plus).
It might be $500, but for that outlay, you get an Intel N100 quad-core processor, 8GB of DDR5 memory (expandable to 16GB), dual 2.5GbE LAN ports, and two M.2 SSD slots.
The extra money does return some useful features for those wanting greater network bandwidth or a fail-over configuration.
Overall, the Ugreen DH4300 Plus is a solid choice for those who require a basic, affordable NAS with limited advanced features and low performance requirements.
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Specs
|
Item |
Spec |
|---|---|
|
CPU: |
Rockchip RK3588 (8 cores, 8 Threads) |
|
GPU: |
Arm Mali-G610 MP4 |
|
RAM: |
8GB LPDDR4X (not expandable) |
|
Internal Storage: |
32GB for UGOS Pro |
|
SATA Storage: |
4-bays (3.5 or 2.5 inch mechanisms) |
|
M.2 Storage: |
N/A |
|
Ports: |
2x USB3.2 Gen2 USB-A (10Gbps) |
| Row 7 – Cell 0 |
1x USB3.2 Gen2 USB-C (10Gbps) |
| Row 8 – Cell 0 |
1x HDMI 2.0b |
|
Networking: |
1x RJ45 2.5GbE LAN |
|
OS: |
UGOS Pro |
|
Maximum Capacity: |
4x 30TB SATA (120TB) |
|
RAID Modes: |
JBOD/Basic/RAID 0/RAID 1/RAID 5/RAID 6/RAID 10 |
|
PSU: |
12V 6A 72W |
|
Dimensions: |
155 x 155 x 215.7 mm (LxWxH) |
|
Weight: |
600g |
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Design
- Top-loader
- Easy access
- Simple and silent
The Ugreen DH4300 Plus reminds me a little of the old WD MyBook designs, where you could swap the drives if (or rather when) they went bad.
The top of the NAS lifts away to reveal the drive bays. There is no catch to flip, but four magnets hold it in place, which seems a bit too easy.
That said, it isn’t the only thing about this design that is minimalist, as the whole thing appears to have been boiled down to only those things that are genuinely needed.
The four vertically mounted drive trays are plastic, but they are solidly made and have rubberised cushioning on them to protect the drives screwed to them.
I’m a fan of tool-less designs, but both drive sizes need screws on the DH4300 Plus, and those are provided along with a small screwdriver. Once the drives are mounted to the trays, they can be pushed back into position, landing with a confident click.
To keep them cool, air is drawn through a grill on the rear of the lid, and it then descends down past the drives before cooling the mainboard in the bottom and then being ejected out of the case along the sides.
For those curious, there is no direct access to the system board without disassembly, and since the memory is surface-mounted, there is little point in doing so.
The front features a power button alongside five LED indicators, one for each drive and a fifth for the LAN, as well as a single USB-C port.
On the back are the two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and all the USB ports are 10Gb/s. There is a single LAN port, but it’s 2.5GbE, so it is possible to transfer data to and from this NAS at up to 275MB/s. With the four drives installed, those speeds are realistic.
The NAS also features an HDMI port, allowing it to output directly to a display. Additionally, the USB ports enable you to turn this system into a functional computer with office tools and a web browser.
A 75W laptop PSU is included, along with screws for the drives, a CAT6 Ethernet cable and some basic user instructions for mounting drives and booting the system up.
I’m using other Ugreen NAS devices, such as the DXP8800 Plus and DXP4800 Plus, so I fired up the https://find.ugnas.com/ web location and found this NAS immediately after it had drives installed and was powered up.
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Features
- Rockchip RK3588
- 5 PCIe Lanes
- Zero upgrades
Having used the N100 in the DXP4800 and DXP2800 models, and utilised Intel chips across all the DXP range, the DH4300 Plus takes Ugreen in an entirely new direction with its Rockchip RK3588, an ARM 8-core SoC that runs at 2.4GHz.
This SoC is the epitome of power efficiency. It is considered by some to be a standout device in the ARM-based embedded space, particularly for edge AI, multimedia, and industrial applications.
Its highlights include four Cortex-A76 and four Cortex-A55 cores, as well as an ARM Mali-G610 MP4 GPU that supports Vulkan, OpenCL, and OpenGL ES. An integrated NPU that offers 6 TOPS performance, supports INT4/8/16, FP16, BF16 and TF32.
The chip can interface with LPDDR4/4x or DDR5 up to 32GB, and it supports PCIe 3.0, SATA 3.0, and USB 3.1, along with an integrated Gigabit LAN port.
Its ability to use DDR5 and support up to 32GB hints that, if the DH4300 Plus sells well, we might see a Pro model with faster RAM and more of it at some point.
While it’s not based on x86 architecture, for an embedded application, this SoC is a great choice, potentially making this machine nearly as potent as the N100 models.
It only has five PCIe lanes, four of which are PCIe 3.0, and one of which is PCIe 2.1, typically used for a Wireless M.2 card. That might seem meagre, but as SATA is onboard and it doesn’t have a PCIe slot, all that bandwidth in this case can be allocated to the 2.5GbE LAN port and USB, which includes dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and a USB-C that’s also Gen 2.
That’s significantly better USB speeds than most four-bay NAS devices under $400, and notably better than the Synology DS423, which only has dual 1GbE LAN ports and USB 3.1 Gen 1.
The quality of these USB ports has significant implications for the operating system, as some of the hardware limitations can be circumvented.
Overall, for a NAS at this price point, the specification is excellent. I just wish it could be upgraded to 16GB, though it may be that Ugreen is strategically holding that back for an HD4300 Pro model, perhaps.
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Software
- UGOS Pro
- Limited applications
- No to TrueNAS
I’ve written plenty about UGOS Pro previously, and even described it in my first Ugreen NAS review as being a work-in-progress. And, amazingly, progress has been swift.
The original version of this OS had more missing features than a sizable block of Emmental cheese. However, since the launch of the DXP series, the updates to UGOS Pro have come thick and fast. Almost every update fills one of those holes or adds to the limited app selection, and now it’s a dramatically more rounded and secure solution than it once was.
One slight confusion about the version on the DX4300 Plus is that its number, 1.8.11.0048, appears to be significantly behind the 1.8.20.0012 that the DXP NAS is currently running.
Now, it may be that this is intentional, or this OS is a spur from the one on the DXP. I say this because a few features are missing from the DH4300 Plus that are implemented on the DXP hardware.
Working through the Control Panel, I noticed that Power Management wasn’t an option in the Hardware & Power menu, and in the Network connection submenu, the option to create a link aggregation was also unavailable.
Some of you might be reading this and wondering if Mark is getting punch-drunk, because how can you link aggregate when there is only one LAN port? I’ll get to that shortly, but for the moment, let’s accept that it’s not there.
What’s even more curious is that the DH4300 Plus version has extra Advanced security features in the Security menu, with tick boxes to “Improve protection against cross-site request forgery attacks”, and “Improve security with HTTP Content Security Policy (CSP) header”. Why these options are missing from the DXP release is a mystery.
I didn’t notice any other differences in the Control Panel, but UGOS Pro on any system doesn’t support iSCSI, WORM volumes (Write-Once-Read-Many) and the file system doesn’t yet offer a hybrid drive format that maximises drives of different sizes.
Given that this NAS doesn’t have M.2 slots, you might assume that cache control is also disabled in the Storage sub-system, but it isn’t. You can still use a 2.5-inch SATA SSD in this NAS and configure it to cache a RAID array of the other three drives.
This configuration might not be ideal as it reduces the maximum capacity by 25%, but at least that feature isn’t disabled.
Going back to the link aggregation, the reason I know it’s not there is that I plugged a StarTech ST3300GU3B into one of the USB ports. This device is a USB 3.0 hub with a Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Once the system has been rebooted, it appears as a second network adapter in the Network controls.
This was a revelation, as it negates the limitations of having only a single LAN port, and it opens up the possibility that some form of LAN fail-over might be implemented somehow.
And, given there are three 10Gbps USB ports, two USB-A and one USB-C, in theory, you could have four LAN ports connected to this machine. There also might be a way to reactivate link aggregation/fail-over with a script, hopefully.
If we consider that each of the four drives is capable of at least 150MB/s, then they can easily oversaturate the single 2.5GbE LAN port, which tops out at about 270MB/s. However, with extra LAN ports, more of that bandwidth can be exploited. It might be possible to attach a 5GbE LAN port, such as Ugreen’s own USB-C 5Gbps Wired LAN Adapter or the 2.5GbE model, which is highly affordable. I didn’t get a chance to try a USB docking station on this hardware, but that might work.
Obviously, I can’t verify any specific hardware for its ability to play nicely with the DH4300 Plus, but it would make sense if those made by Ugreen were more likely to function as intended.
How suitable UGOS Pro is for a particular application is highly dependent on the use case, since this OS only come with a relatively small selection of apps. That said, it has almost all the tools that most people use a NAS for. Those include a photo, music and video collection and playback apps, sync, snapshot, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Online Office, Docker and a Cloud connection app.
The one missing common area is a tool to manage security cameras, but it’s not difficult to add on using Docker.
This Docker-centric approach is the one Ugreen has taken with its NAS options. It set out to deliver some expected first-party apps that most users want and point them to Docker if they need extra functionality. A number of the selectable tools, including Jellyfin, qBittorrent, and Home Assistant, aren’t compiled for UGOS tools but are pre-configured Docker containers. If you want Plex, you can add it via Docker, although some container management tool would be helpful for those who don’t know how the Linux file system on these machines is organised.
The one missing feature that was on the DXP machines is the Virtual Machine. This can be useful if you wish to run something like Home Assistant and install some features not supported by the Docker container. That it wasn’t included isn’t a massive surprise, as this isn’t an Intel or AMD processor, and emulating that in the Rockchip SoC wouldn’t be pleasant.
The lack of an x86-compliant processor also puts TrueNAS at a disadvantage, which Ugreen supports on the DXP series. There may be third-party NAS operating systems that are compiled for ARM and might work here, but most are Intel x86-focused.
Overall, the software side of this NAS is suitable for most users who require basic functionality for playing back video, music, or photo collections, and as a live sync partner for a local PC.
Custom installations that involve specific Docker containers and root-controlled areas of the file system might be beyond a typical user, but within the scope of professional IT staff.
It’s certainly not as comprehensive as some NAS operating systems, but it’s reasonably secure, and the available functionality continues to expand every few weeks.
Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus: Final verdict
If other NAS makers aren’t concerned yet, they should be with the appearance of this machine.
What’s interesting about the DH4300 Plus is not the features it brings to the four-bay NAS market, which we’ve seen before, but the price it delivers them for.
Cheap four-bays typically don’t have 2.5GbE LAN ports, 10Gbps USB or HDMI 2.1 out.
Needing these often pushes the price point above $500, or more.
If you want M.2 support, PCIe slots or virtualisation, then Ugreen has the DXP series at extra cost. It was careful not to step on the toes of the DXP4800 Plus in what boxes were ticked on the DH4300 Plus, though Synology knows how exruciating that process can become further down the line.
Those who have already dismissed the DH4300 Plus because it doesn’t have iSCSI LUNs or it doesn’t run Plex merely by clicking ‘install’ are probably missing the point.
This NAS is designed to fit a specific niche: single or dual-purpose installations that require power efficiency and easy interfacing with other NAS hardware for backups.
And, this NAS is perfectly poised to do those jobs without the need for the more exotic functionality that the DXP series already supports.
Should you buy a Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus?
|
Value |
Lots of features, good quality and relatively cheap |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
Simple but effective design |
4 / 5 |
|
Features |
No x86-based, but responsive to use |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Limited by the single 2.5GbE LAN port, but powerful enough |
4 / 5 |
|
Overall |
A better NAS than the price would suggest |
4 / 5 |
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