Categories: Reviews

Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2 review: affordable and performing

Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2 review. In a market full of adapters for SSDs and HDDs, let’s find out how Ugreen manages to differentiate itself

Contents

Points in favor

Points against

Ugreen is a manufacturer that is increasingly trying to assert its position on the adapter market and beyond. A company that aims to achieve strong products from a quality / price point of view. The model proposed today is no less, we are talking about Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2.

The market is literally saturated with this kind of products, but Ugreen has sought the solution to differentiate itself from other manufacturers. We are talking about a Enclosure, that is a universal case, widely compatible, which allows you to turn a 2.5 “SSD or HDD into an external and portable solution. Let’s find out more in the full review.

Unboxing e materiali | Review Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2

The materials are certainly not among the noblest, it is made of plastic, but of good workmanship, despite this However, Ugreen has not given up on general quality. The product is solid and the trolley opening system is stable, there are still some creaks in the structure, but the care of the product we notice it especially when it is in action, it does not vibrate, thanks above all to the internal rubber pads and EVA sponges, positioned on the 4 sides of the caddy.

The incoming connection is of type USB C 3.1 Gen 2, protocol compatible UASP 6Gbps. The internal structure consists of a trolley that can be easily extracted thanks to a hook sliding plug and play. Really wide and wide compatibility, we have support for PC, laptop, MacBook, PS5 / PS4, Xbox One, router and smart TV. Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2. Also features a Blue color indication LED, which will indicate the operating status thanks to its flashing, and with a steady light the inactivity status. Furthermore the system is intelligent, in that after about 10 minutes of inactivity it will shut down the disk activity.

Technical specifications and tests | Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2 review

We start from the Chipset to get to real performance. The controller used by Ugreen is a model manufactured by ASMedia, the 235CM. It is a model that supports USB specifications 3.1, in Revision 1.0. It is not recent but it does its job well, by the ATA standard supports a bus maximum of 6Gbps in bandwidth. An absolutely right configuration for all the needs of this product. But in real use how will it behave though? we did several tests to figure it out.

Before going into the tests, we need to spend a few words on how to interpret these values. It is not always easy to expect 100% fidelity from these products with the pure performance of a particular product that we are going to use, this is because in any case through the different connections that exist with the Chip Bridge we have a bandwidth that is not kept at its peak performance, but may be subject to reductions, also based on our connection used.

What interests us most, is instead the stability of such products. Such a product should never suffer from abnormal disconnections during operation, sudden freezes, major slowdowns during heavy use, and overheating during long transfers. We have carried out several tests, each aimed at a certain feature which we consider indispensable for such products. The product used was a 2.5 ”Hard Disk, in particular a WD Blue precisely by Western Digital, the model WD500LPCX at 5,400 RPM.

Performance consistency test

If we connect directly this Hard Disk under consideration (WD500LPCX ) to a PC, we get the following values;

With a average of 113 MB / s in reading and 116 MB / s in writing, detected with the help of CrystalDiskMark, to measure maximum theoretical sequential read / write performance with random data of various sizes. Thanks instead to HD Tune Pro, a professional tool also used by companies in the sector. Which allows you to scan hard drives for errors and thoroughly analyze various data and performance aspects, we measured about 317 MB / s as a Burst rate value, with a Transfer Rate Average of 115 MB / s for an Access Time of 10.4 ms.

We then ran the same tests again, not so much to analyze the performance, but to make a performance consistency comparison once mounted inside the Ugreen Enclosure Type-C Gen 2. And the data was the following;

They speak for themselves, the IOPS performance is very similar, and the performance is more or less in line with the pure disk performance. A sign that the signal cleanliness is good, and the controller performance is great, we can’t complain.

Real use test

Other test we performed was that relative to actual use, reproducing a typical usage scenario. We chose a Hard Disk to carry out the test as the vast majority of people purchase an Enclosure Caddy primarily for use with HDDs. As for today, if you really have to use an external SSD as a portable memory or support, you certainly opt for NVMe memories. And the typical scenario of using an HDD with its enclosure is certainly the one in the storage of photos, documents, videos, and the like.

I have prepared one compressed folder containing files for 30GB, including various documents (PDF, Word files, etc.), photos, videos and films, for about 6,000 files each with a different weight, from a few MB to many GB. Loading it into the disc, the writing phase ends in approx 12 minutes timed (which is quite normal for a hard disk of this kind), with stability during the transfer and constant speed.

I then tried browsing the files to notice any instability but this never happened.

The conclusions

As for the overheating we can be quite calm, after hours of use it was always and in any case at normal temperatures. Too bad for the lack of 4 rubber pads in the case, it would have given more grip to the structure and more safety when storing it on surfaces.

For its selling price it is absolutely recommended, does its duty, and does it well. If you intend to transform an old hard drive into an external media this is the product for you for ease of use and quality price. The disc mounting system is convenient and intuitive. The benefits are insured. That’s it for this review of the Green Enclosure, if you want to continue to know the latest news from the hardware world, keep following us. Greetings from TechGameWorld.com.