Ugreen DH2300 NAS Evaluate

A couple of weeks in the past, I reviewed the Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus. I had comparatively low expectations as a result of Rockchip RK3576 chipset and Ugreen being comparatively new to the world of NAS units.

Nevertheless, I got here away pleasantly shocked. It’s not good, UGOS is restricted in performance in comparison with the likes of Synology or self-built choices operating Unraid, however total, I’ve discovered it to be a superb, inexpensive, and power-efficient NAS.

Ugreen not too long ago despatched me the Ugreen DH2300, which, after a passing look, seemed to be equivalent to the DH4300, however with two drive bays, much less RAM and slower gigabit Ethernet.

Nevertheless, Ugreen has additionally tweaked UGOS on this mannequin, eradicating Docker, which severely limits a number of the superior performance that’s doable on the DH4300, equivalent to operating Dwelling Assistant or Jellyfin media server.

Whereas that’s disappointing, it’s best to issue within the worth. That is just about the most cost effective 2-bay NAS available on the market, lower than half the worth of the DH4300. So, whereas much less interesting than the DH4300, the DH2300 does find yourself being an awesome little NAS. The options are very primary, however it’s extremely inexpensive and really energy environment friendly.

Associated Evaluations

Specification

Unboxing

The DH2300 arrives in typical Ugreen packaging – clear, minimal, and well-protected. Contained in the field, you get the NAS unit itself, an exterior energy adapter, an Ethernet cable, mounting screws for the drive bays, and a fast begin information. The setup documentation is easy sufficient, although I might have appreciated extra element on community configuration choices for customers unfamiliar with NAS units.

The unit itself feels fairly well-built regardless of the plastic chassis. The air flow is beneficiant, with slotted openings on the highest panel and sides to advertise airflow. The entrance panel is clear with a single energy button and standing LEDs that point out drive exercise and community connectivity. The drive bays are accessible from the highest by eradicating the magnetic cowl, which makes set up easy however does imply that you must energy down the unit for drive adjustments – hot-swapping isn’t formally supported, although some customers have reported success with it.

Set Up

Preliminary setup is dealt with via UGOS Professional’s net interface, which you entry by navigating to the NAS’s IP handle in your browser. I assumed this was not doable on the DH4300, however later realised that once I scanned my community for the IP, it simply didn’t present a hyperlink for the net interface.

The wizard walks you thru creating an admin account, configuring community settings, and initialising your storage pool. The method is genuinely user-friendly and may pose no issues even for first-time NAS customers.

One factor I appreciated is that UGOS robotically detects your drives and suggests acceptable RAID configurations based mostly in your setup. For a two-bay system, you’re realistically taking a look at both RAID 1 for redundancy or RAID 0 for optimum capability. I opted for RAID 1 with two 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives, giving me 4TB of usable house with full mirroring. The array initialisation took round 45 minutes, which is cheap.

Throughout setup, you additionally create a Ugreen account, which is required if you wish to use the distant entry options. This would possibly delay some privacy-conscious customers, however it’s a mandatory step for the cloud relay performance to work.

Distant Entry

In my authentic evaluation, I didn’t trouble with the distant entry perform. I work in IT, and I’m a bit sceptical of distant entry options I’m not conversant in. If I must entry my NASync DH4300 remotely, I can do it through Tailscale.

With this, I made a decision to try it out, and it really works completely properly. The method is easy, that you must have a Ugreen account, which you then must confirm, and this will get tied to your NAS.

You may then entry your NAS through the cellular app remotely or through the devoted hyperlink you get.

Cellular & Home windows Apps

Each the cellular and Home windows apps permit you to entry the total interface.

The primary profit is that you could create backup duties in your units. So, on Home windows, I can create a backup activity of particular folders or total drives.

You may both run these duties manually or have them again up in actual time.

You may as well create sync duties, with choices for one-way syncing (so, a backup), two-way syncing, or syncing from the Ugreen to your laptop. This may be arrange as an actual time sync, or you may schedule it.

On cellular, the backup perform is for photographs, and it is among the options I like most about this, because it provides me Google Pictures-like performance with out the privateness issues or the price of storing full-resolution photographs within the cloud.

Lacking performance vs Ugreen NASync DH4300 Plus

After I initially posted my information article on the NASync DH2300 launch, I said that this had Docker help.

Ugreen emailed to right me. For some cause, this lacks Docker, however within the electronic mail they did say “the DH2300 does not help Docker in the meanwhile”.

So, I’m hopeful that this can be added at a later date.

Sadly, once I began to evaluation this, I realised that a number of different apps had been lacking. That is partly as a result of lack of Docker, for instance, on my DH4300, qbittorrent is definitely a Docker app.

Sadly, on the DH4300, each Dwelling Assistant and Jellyfin get put in as docker containers, so these are additionally unavailable on the DH2300.

SSH

Connecting to SSH reveals that the underlying OS is Debian 12 (Bookworm) base with Linux kernel 6.1.115+, compiled by Ugreen.

I don’t advocate it, however you may, in concept, add performance through SSH, equivalent to Docker.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t advocate this to individuals unfamiliar with Linux or if you happen to plan to make use of this for any vital recordsdata.

I experimented with putting in issues through SSH and located that lots of of packages had been marked as “held”, which is because of Ugreen making an attempt to maintain their firmware constant and avoiding points with software program updates through UGOS.

After intensive modifications, I used to be in a position to get Docker and Dockage put in.

Nevertheless, as a result of variety of modifications to the underlying system, it appears extremely doubtless that it will trigger points with UGOS. I’d anticipate updates to fail, or in the event that they full, they may doubtless overwrite the adjustments I made to the underlying OS.

So, to reiterate, I strongly advocate not doing this, you’ll doubtless break one thing, however if you happen to really feel assured and prefer to tinker with issues, then there may be potential to get extra performance from this NAS. I might not try this on a manufacturing NAS the place you retailer vital information.

Pictures / AI Picture Recognition / Picture Backups

As beforehand talked about, I like the photograph backup perform of this NAS. I nonetheless backup photographs to Google Pictures, however I’ve heard of many stories of individuals getting locked out of their account and shedding years’ price of non-public photographs.

With the DH4300, I used Google Takeout to export all my photographs after which extracted them into my photographs folder on the NAS.

I’ve additionally enabled all of the AI options, so the NAS robotically identifies faces. I can even establish objects and use metadata to point out the placement the place photographs had been taken on a map.

The AI tagging isn’t the quickest, however my NAS is left on 24/7, so the method was largely unnoticeable. I simply forgot about it for a few days a let it do its factor. Just like Google photographs, you’ll doubtless should merge faces as it isn’t 100% good, however I’ve discovered that it has carried out a good job total.

I received’t declare it’s higher than Google Pictures, or the self-host favorite, Immich, however there are not any on-going subscription prices vs Google, and it’s considerably simpler to arrange than Immich.

For customers who need to escape Google’s ecosystem and have their photographs saved regionally with first rate search performance, the DH2300 affords wonderful worth. The face recognition works properly sufficient that I can seek for particular individuals and get related outcomes, and the placement mapping based mostly on EXIF information is genuinely helpful for locating photographs from explicit journeys or areas.

Cloud Drive

The cloud drive characteristic is the opposite principal factor I take advantage of my Ugreen NAS for. Just like photographs, I don’t need to be reliant on gaining access to OneDrive or Google Drive. If I get locked out of something (or hacked), I may lose years’ price of information. So this performance is an ideal approach to make sure I’ve an area backup.

Different Options

Past the core file storage and backup performance, the DH2300 contains a number of different options price mentioning. The HDMI output can be utilized to attach the NAS on to a TV or monitor for native media playback. In testing, I used to be in a position to play 4K H.265 video recordsdata with none stuttering or dropped frames, which is spectacular given the ARM processor. The {hardware} decoder within the RK3576 handles most typical video codecs effectively, although I did discover some occasional stuttering with notably high-bitrate 4K content material.

The built-in media server app supplies a primary interface for searching and enjoying video recordsdata. It’s not as feature-rich as Plex or Jellyfin, nevertheless it works adequately for easy media playback. The interface is clear sufficient, although looking out and filtering choices are restricted. If in case you have a well-organised media library, it’s completely usable. In case your recordsdata are a multitude, you’ll battle.

UGOS Professional additionally features a obtain supervisor that helps HTTP, FTP, and BitTorrent protocols. I examined the BitTorrent shopper with a couple of Linux ISOs, and it labored reliably sufficient, although the interface feels a bit primary in comparison with devoted torrent purchasers like qBittorrent. Obtain speeds had been respectable, hitting round 80-90MB/s on my gigabit connection.

The ability administration choices are first rate. You may schedule the NAS to energy on and off at particular instances, which is beneficial if you happen to solely want entry throughout sure hours and need to save energy in a single day. You may as well configure the NAS to enter sleep mode after a interval of inactivity, although I’ve saved mine operating 24/7, given the low idle energy consumption.

Value and Different Choices

The Ugreen DH2300 is obtainable to order now. It has an RRP of £170 however is obtainable from Ugreen for £153.

This makes it one of the crucial inexpensive choices available on the market.

The 4 bay NASync DH4300 is greater than double the worth at £324.

The 2-bay NASync DXP2800, which has a considerably extra highly effective Intel N100 quad-core CPU is obtainable for £271

The TerraMaster F2-212 is, or was, the most effective different. It has has a much less highly effective chipset and fewer RAM however significantly better performance because of Docker and an even bigger app retailer. This was £170, btu it seems like Terramaster have stopped promoting it. The 4 bay F4-212 mannequin is £230.

Synology has the DS223J, which is £189. This may have way more performance, however a lot much less efficiency.

Synology has the DS223J, which is £189. This may have way more performance due to DSM, however the {hardware} is considerably weaker. You’re looking at a dual-core Realtek RTD1619B processor with simply 1GB of RAM. For easy file serving, it’ll work superb, however don’t anticipate it to deal with AI photograph recognition or 4K video transcoding. Synology’s software program ecosystem is undeniably higher, with years of growth behind it, however you’re paying a premium for that polished expertise.

Asustor has the Drivestor 2 Lite, which is £174. This makes use of a Realtek RTD1296 quad-core processor and comes with 1GB of RAM, so performance-wise it sits someplace between the Synology and the Ugreen. Asustor’s ADM working system in all fairness succesful, although I discovered it much less intuitive than UGOS once I examined it.

General

The Ugreen DH2300 is among the most inexpensive NAS enclosures available on the market. The Rockchip ARM chipset is each succesful and power-efficient, providing you with the choice for some superior performance, equivalent to AI photograph tagging. Whereas UGOS Professional can’t compete with Synology DiskStation Supervisor (DSM), and has far fewer apps than the TerraMaster TOS, I discover it completely sufficient for a primary NAS.

My principal criticism is that Ugreen seems to have hobbled this NAS with fewer software program options than the DH4300 Plus. They run the identical chipset, so there isn’t any logical cause to omit issues like Jellyfin or Docker. As it is a very new product, I hope Ugreen will add this performance at a later date.

By way of uncooked efficiency, the DH2300 punches properly above its weight class. File switch speeds over the 1GbE connection are about what you’ll anticipate – sequential reads and writes within the 110-115MB/s vary, dropping to 60-80MB/s with smaller combined recordsdata. That is totally network-limited somewhat than being constrained by the NAS {hardware}. If Ugreen had included 2.5GbE, I believe we might see considerably increased throughput.

The ability effectivity is genuinely wonderful. At 9-10W idle and 12-13W beneath load, this is among the most effective NAS items I’ve examined. For context, my previous Synology DS220+ attracts round 15-18W doing the identical duties. Over a yr of 24/7 operation, that distinction provides as much as actual financial savings in your electrical energy invoice. At present UK power costs (round £0.25 per kWh), the DH2300 will value you roughly £22 per yr to run repeatedly, in comparison with £33-£40 for much less environment friendly options. Small financial savings, admittedly, however they accumulate over the machine’s lifespan.

The noise ranges are acceptable. With the fan on automated settings, the unit is barely audible from a couple of toes away throughout idle intervals. Below heavy load, the fan turns into noticeable however not objectionable. I measured round 35-38dBA at one metre distance beneath typical use, rising to 42-44dBA beneath sustained heavy load. In case you are planning to put this in a bed room or quiet workplace, you would possibly need to configure quieter fan profiles in UGOS, although it will improve drive temperatures barely.

Talking of temperatures, drive thermals are well-managed. My two 4TB IronWolf drives sometimes sit at 36-38°C throughout idle intervals and climb to 42-43°C beneath sustained transfers. These are completely protected working temperatures for mechanical drives, properly inside producer specs. The only rear fan does a good job of extracting warmth, aided by the beneficiant air flow openings within the plastic chassis.

Construct high quality is sufficient for the worth. Sure, it’s plastic somewhat than metallic, however the building feels strong sufficient, with no flex or creaking when dealing with the unit. The magnetic prime cowl for drive entry is a pleasant contact, making set up easy. My solely concern is long-term sturdiness – plastic housings can turn into brittle over time, notably if uncovered to daylight or warmth. Preserve it someplace cool and out of direct daylight, and it ought to final for years.

The shortage of hot-swap help is a minor inconvenience somewhat than a deal-breaker for residence customers. In a enterprise atmosphere the place uptime is vital, you’ll need correct hot-swap bays. For residence use, the occasional must energy down the unit to exchange a drive is hardly the top of the world.

UGOS Professional continues to enhance with every replace. After I first examined Ugreen NAS units final yr, the software program felt tough across the edges. A yr on, it has matured significantly. The interface is cleaner, options are extra steady, and the app ecosystem, whereas nonetheless restricted, has expanded. Ugreen seems dedicated to ongoing growth, which is encouraging for long-term help.

That stated, UGOS nonetheless lacks the polish and maturity of Synology’s DSM and even QNAP’s QTS. When you want superior options like digital machines, intensive Docker help, or extremely granular permission controls, one can find UGOS limiting. However for the core NAS capabilities – file storage, backups, photograph administration, and primary media streaming – it does the job completely properly.

The audience for the DH2300 is obvious. This isn’t a NAS for fanatics who need to run advanced Docker stacks or construct elaborate residence lab setups. That is for normal customers who’re bored with paying month-to-month subscriptions to Google, Microsoft, or Apple for cloud storage and need a easy, inexpensive different that they management. For that use case, the DH2300 is genuinely wonderful.

If Ugreen provides Docker help in a future firmware replace, the DH2300 turns into considerably extra interesting. Even with out it, at £153, this represents excellent worth for a primary 2-bay NAS. The mix of first rate {hardware}, low energy consumption, quiet operation, and sufficient software program makes it simple to advocate for residence customers searching for to flee cloud storage subscriptions with out diving into the complexity of self-building or spending £300+ on premium options.

I’m James, a UK-based tech fanatic and the Editor and Proprietor of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Enthusiastic about all issues expertise, my experience spans from computer systems and networking to cellular, wearables, and good residence units.

As a health fanatic who loves operating and biking, I even have a eager curiosity in fitness-related expertise, and I take each alternative to cowl this area of interest on my weblog. My various pursuits enable me to convey a novel perspective to tech running a blog, merging life-style, health, and the newest tech tendencies.

In my tutorial pursuits, I earned a BSc in Data Techniques Design from UCLAN, earlier than advancing my studying with a Grasp’s Diploma in Computing. This superior research additionally included Cisco CCNA accreditation, additional demonstrating my dedication to understanding and staying forward of the expertise curve.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has constantly ranked Mighty Gadget as one of many prime expertise blogs within the UK. With my dedication to expertise and drive to share my insights, I goal to proceed offering my readers with participating and informative content material.

Final replace on 2025-11-10 / Affiliate hyperlinks / Pictures from Amazon Product Promoting API