TerraMaster F4-424 Pro review: A powerful NAS at a reasonable price

TerraMaster opened 2024 with killer network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures with the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro leading the charge. This imposing four-bay enclosure has some beefy specifications. Rocking an Intel Core i3-N300 processor, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, and 2.5 GbE networking, there’s plenty to love about this NAS. While TerraMaster traditionally lagged behind the competition for the operating system and software support, the brand has been actively working on both so I was eager to see how the F4-424 ran and what the experience was like.

While the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro is the flagship configuration of the new 424 NAS enclosures, costing $700 at MSRP, it’s worth the price with the specifications on offer. The Intel processor, 32GB RAM, and integrated GPU alone make it worth the cost and one of the best NAS for value. Speedy networking provides ample bandwidth for the four drive bays and Intel chip to run as designed. With multiple user accounts connected simultaneously, you won’t notice degraded performance. And if you don’t like TerraMaster’s TOS, installing another OS is painless.

About this review: TerraMaster provided XDA with a sample for this review, but had no input to its contents.

TerraMaster F4-424 Pro

TerraMaster’s F4-424 Pro is one of the brand’s most powerful servers for the home and office in a compact package. Inside is an Intel Core i3-N300 processor, plenty of RAM, super-fast networking, and the ability to run an OS of your choosing.

Pros

• Impressive specifications for the price
• Intel Core i3 N processor and DDR5 RAM
• 2.5 GbE networking and M.2 expansion
• TOS 6.0 is a vast improvement

Cons

• Lackluster first and third party app selection
• HDMI port not suitable for media

Price, specs, and availability

The TerraMaster F4-424 costs $700 at MSRP. You can often find TerraMaster branded NAS on sale throughout the year, so I’d expect to see this enclosure drop to around $600, if not less. This is a reasonable price for a four-bay enclosure. Its main competition is the Synology DiskStation DS923+, which costs $600 yet has far less RAM, a slower processor, and 1GbE connections. TerraMaster always offered better hardware specifications for the price and the F4-424 Pro is no exception.

The Intel Core i3-N300 has 8 physical cores that can boost up to 3.8 GHz. It’s an incredibly potent chip that can compete against some older desktop-class processors. The 32 GB of DDR5 RAM allows you to run multiple apps and services with more than one user account connected to the NAS enclosure. Then there are the two 2.5GbE network links, which provide enough bandwidth for the four drive bays and other specifications. It’s a great NAS for the price.

Design and features

A good-looking server

TerraMaster NAS enclosures have gone under a redesign with the most recent launches and the F4-424 Pro has a new all-black design. It has a more sleek look, though I secretly miss the aluminum finish. The front houses the four drive bays and some LED indicators, but no front-facing USB port. The two side panels are clear aside from TerraMaster branding. The bottom and top panels are also completely void of anything. The rear of the NAS is where connections are made, using two USB-A 3.2 ports, two 2.5GbE ports, and a single HDMI port.

There’s also a DC input connection for the external power supply. The enclosure needs to be pulled apart to access the two M.2 SSD slots and the single SODIMM slot for RAM. Other NAS servers make this process easier with external doors or moving the RAM slots to within the enclosure itself, but TerraMaster only requires a few screws to be removed on the rear panel. The shell slides toward the rear and can be removed, exposing the three slots and the main PCB. This will also need to be done to replace or remove the OS drive.

Network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures such as the F4-424 Pro are all about software and while the hardware, design, and features of this TerraMaster NAS are great, TOS will either make or break the experience.

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Software and performance

Performance for days

TOS 6.0 is the latest release of TerraMaster’s operating system and is in open beta at the time of publishing this review. I opted to try out the next-generation OS update instead of the latest public release to see if it allows the powerful internals to run smoother. This is one colossal update and one that can help TerraMaster position its enclosures against the established competition. Installing TOS 6.0 is simple, following a redesigned installation wizard that runs through various steps, including setting up TRAID — TerraMaster’s version of Synology’s hybrid RAID SHR.

Entering TOS is much like a Windows or Linux desktop experience. It’s in the web browser, but you can explore and configure the NAS to your liking, and run apps and other services. TerraMaster also has a mobile app available for Android and iOS that can connect to the F4-424 Pro and manage it remotely. Everything works as expected and is well laid out, something TerraMaster has improved upon through recent updates. There’s no problem running TOS 6.0 on this level of hardware, even TrueNAS SCALE runs flawlessly.

I was able to install an NVMe M.2 SSD in one of the available slots for data caching (not that you’d need it with 32 GB of RAM), populate all four bays with Seagate IronWolf NAS drives, and fully saturate the two 2.5GbE links with multiple clients connected. I’m not disappointed with the omission of a 10GbE port as it would be overkill with the processor only supporting a few PCI lanes for speedy storage. Running Plex Media Server and transcoding some files was painless with the Intel Core i3-N300 CPU and powerful graphics processing.

Competition

Synology’s DiskStation DS923+ is the primary competitor to the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro. Inside this NAS is the AMD Ryzen R1600, a four-core processor with a top speed of 3.1 GHz. It’s not even close to the Intel Core i3-N300 inside the F4-424 Pro. RAM is a similar comparison with just 4 GB of DDR4 installed at the factory. The NAS supports a maximum of 32GB, but TerraMaster kits the F4-424 Pro with 32 GB of DDR5 by default. The F4-424 Pro is a more powerful NAS, but the DiskStation DS923+ has the better OS.

• 	TerraMaster F4-424 Pro	Synology DiskStation DS923+
  CPU	Intel Core i3-N300	AMD Ryzen R1600
  Memory	32 GB DDR5	4 GB DDR4
  Drive Bays	4	4
  Expansion	2x M.2 PCIe NVMe	2x M.2 PCIe NVMe, 1x PCIe 3.0 x2
  Ports	2x 2.5 GbE, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2×1, 1x HDMI	2x 1 GbE, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x eSATA
  OS	TOS	DSM
  Price	$699	$600
  Dimensions	222 x 179 x 154 mm	166 x 199 x 223 mm
  Weight	3.4 kg	2.24 kg

TerraMaster continues to work on its operating system and the user interface, but the first-party app problem is what needs to be addressed. Synology has an established ecosystem with a healthy app store for its NAS enclosures and a powerful cloud platform. The latter isn’t a requirement and you can easily use a Synology NAS enclosure without a connection to Synology’s servers, but if you did want expand what your NAS can do, there are some powerful features available.

Should you buy the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro?

You should buy the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro if:

• You require a powerful NAS with beefy specifications at a reasonable price.
• You will be running multiple apps and services with more than one person connected simultaneously.

You shouldn’t buy the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro if:

• You want to use the HDMI port from a NAS to your TV or other device.
• You prefer to use first-party NAS apps.

The TerraMaster F4-424 Pro is a brilliant network-attached storage enclosure with minor faults. The HDMI port is still unavailable for consuming media through TerraMaster’s operating system. I usually give it a pass as these are more affordable servers and allow one to connect a monitor for installing another OS, but it’s something Asustor and QNAP do well and TerraMaster is charging $700 for this thing. I would expect to be enabled and ready for such a price.

Installing TOS 6.0 is a breeze on this NAS and the user interface has come a long way. TerraMaster is almost on par with the competition for a user-friendly experience though there’s still some ways to go. The selection of first and third-party apps is still lacking in 2024. It’s good to see TerraMaster looking to push community-built apps as a stopgap, but the company needs to nail it in the coming years, or else it’ll continue to feel like Windows Phone all over again.

For the home or small office, the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro is a powerful storage box with enough guts to run more demanding software and services. Install another OS and create a powerful compact server.

TerraMaster F4-424 Pro

TerraMaster’s F4-424 Pro is one of the brand’s most powerful servers for the home and office in a compact package. Inside is an Intel Core i3-N300 processor, plenty of RAM, super-fast networking, and the ability to run an OS of your choosing.