Conclusion
...the F2-221 is a capable unit that's £60 cheaper than the established brands, and the cost saving alone makes it an interesting alternative.It would be fair to say we approached the F2-221 with a sense of trepidation. Can a Chinese manufacturer with a knock-off logo really do justice to a NAS device intended to compete with award-winning units from the likes of Qnap and Synology?
We had our doubts, but we've come away pleasantly surprised. TerraMaster's build quality is decent, having a Celeron J3355 and 2GB of DDR4 under the hood is sensible, and the firm's latest-generation TOS 4.0 operating system offers all the features home users are likely to need. Getting up and running isn't difficult, peak performance is strong, and at this price point it's nice to get HDMI output and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports as standard.
The aforementioned competitors do undoubtedly offer a superior overall experience, yet there are plenty of users who will setup a NAS once and then rarely venture back into the admin panel. As a media server or home repository, the F2-221 is a capable unit that's £60 cheaper than the established brands, and the cost saving alone makes it an interesting alternative.
All the features home users are likely to need
Hardware encryption and transcoding
Link aggregation and HDMI output
Useful selection of multimedia apps
Second DIMM slot not easy to access
Does little to dampen drive noise
TerraMaster F2-221
HEXUS.where2buy
The TerraMaster F2-221 NAS is available to purchase from Amazon.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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