TerraMaster F4-424 Pro

Extremely fast and powerful, this four-bay NAS is great for file storage, but its software lags behind

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PRICE £490 (£588 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk

Although it looks like the F4-424 we reviewed last year (see issue 358, p88), the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro has all-new internals. And a higher price. However, that nets you an eight-core Intel Core i3-N305 CPU (3.8GHz boost speed) and memory slots pre-populated with 32GB of DDR5 RAM, so you're getting a lot for your money. The F4-424 Pro should be ready for anything you can throw at it.

Build quality and usability are mixed. It's great to see four hot-swap hard disk caddies that slide out of the front, but they're not covered and don't have a lock. So, unlike Synology's NAS devices, anyone can pop out a disk whenever they want.

While the hard disks bays are tool-free, the two M.2 2280 NVMe slots (PCIe Gen 3) are only accessible when the case has been unscrewed and removed. That's inconvenient, both in terms of initial installation and for any future maintenance tasks. The dual SODIMM memory slots are also hidden behind this panel, but as the maximum of 32GB of RAM is already installed, you're unlikely to have to touch this.