TerraMaster F5-422

Awesome NAS that won’t hurt your wallet

- Christian Guyton

PROFESSIONAL-GRADE

NAS units tend to cost a pretty penny, with new features such as 10GbE support and Btrfs snapshot file security frequently driving the prices up into four figures. So, when TerraMaster revealed the F5-422, a five-bay NAS box with superfast Ethernet, extensive RAID support, and simultaneous access for up to 500 users, we were intrigued. Then suspicious, as the F5-422 costs just $600, practically half the price of a comparable professional NAS system from industry big-names such as Synology and QNAP.

Yet, as we set up and tested this device, we were hard pushed to find any problems. Yes, the exterior is nothing special, with some cheap-feeling plastic parts, but a NAS box doesn’t have to look good. The outer chassis is solid metal, sufficient to prevent significant damage from anything dropped on it. There aren’t any physical security features, such as locks for the drive bays, which is a shame, but unsurprising given the price.