why are apple laptops so expensive?


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I think Digg linked to an article where the author put Dell and Apple head to head in pricing a computer and found Apple might be better value. I guess it makes sense that Apple computers appear expensive at face value; but you're getting a well-designed, good looking configuration that is guaranteed to work with the oh-so-nice OS, plus a good suite of software that you might have to buy separately with a PC. And like linux2 said, there is a price premium you pay for the brand but if you want it that much you'd be prepared to pay that little extra. You know you're getting quality with Apple ;D

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hey, try and find a 15" laptop with full aluminium construction, 1.83GHz Core Duo, 512MB RAM upgradeable to 2GB, X1600XT 256MB video, 80GB hard drive, backlit keyboard, Wireless LAN and Bluetooth built, 1 INCH thick, linux, mac OS, and Windows capable booting all for 2000 dollars. good luck.

find me a laptop of those specs (dual core, top end graphics card, 2gb ram, fantastic screen @ high res etc) thats so thin with all the design extras apple throw in (lit keys etc) for the same price and i'll bow to you.

edit: damn you posted before me, had the page open for 10 mins in a tab

find me a laptop of those specs (dual core, top end graphics card, 2gb ram, fantastic screen @ high res etc) thats so thin with all the design extras apple throw in (lit keys etc) for the same price and i'll bow to you.

edit: damn you posted before me, had the page open for 10 mins in a tab

Apple Mac Book Pro:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 1x1GB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 256MB ATi X1600 Mobility GFX Card

* Backlit Keyboard & Mac OS

* 15.4-inch TFT display

* SuperDrive (DVD?RW/CD-RW)

* AirPort Extreme

* Bluetooth 2.0

* Apple Remote

* Power Adapter

* Battery

Price: ?2,059

Dell XPS M170:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 2x512MB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 17" 1080P (1920x1200) Display

* 512MB Nvidia Geforce 7900GTX Go.

* 8x DVD/RW

* Power Adapter

* 9 Cell Battery

Price: ?1892.75

I think i just OwNeD the MacBook;) ;)

Apple Mac Book Pro:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 1x1GB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 256MB ATi X1600 Mobility GFX Card

* Backlit Keyboard & Mac OS

* 15.4-inch TFT display

* SuperDrive (DVD?RW/CD-RW)

* AirPort Extreme

* Bluetooth 2.0

* Apple Remote

* Power Adapter

* Battery

Price: ?2,059

Dell XPS M170:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 2x512MB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 17" 1080P (1920x1200) Display

* 512MB Nvidia Geforce 7900GTX Go.

* 8x DVD/RW

* Power Adapter

* 9 Cell Battery

Price: ?1892.75

I think i just OwNeD the MacBook;) ;)

And does that come built in with an awesome package like iLife? Where you have a pretty advance movie, video and photo editing program. Do you have a built in media centre, which comes with a controller? Plus OS X is a great operating system, you will have to shell out around i dunno ?300 for vista? i could get leopard for around ?100 if its based around Tigers price. On top of that i can get a discount off everything since im a student, so that ?2,059 turns?1,894894 and since hes a student he can take advantage of that, get the next OS X at a discount rate, all other software. There are so many advanced programs just designed for the Mac, so if you are into music/video editing you have things like Pro Tools and Final Cut, industry stuff where as you dont get this with a micrsoft machine. You get what you pay for.

I can get a full retail version of Tiger OS X for ?58.75, what a damn good price. If you dont have iLife, thats only ?50, all the other things you need for a system comes cheap from Apple, you have to love it. You even have the luxury to run two operating systems, osx and windows, perfectly, apple have done it again.

So the thing i just quoted seems nothing now doesnt it

Edited by saxondale.

Apple Mac Book Pro:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 1x1GB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 256MB ATi X1600 Mobility GFX Card

* Backlit Keyboard & Mac OS

* 15.4-inch TFT display

* SuperDrive (DVD?RW/CD-RW)

* AirPort Extreme

* Bluetooth 2.0

* Apple Remote

* Power Adapter

* Battery

Price: ?2,059

Dell XPS M170:

* 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo

* 1GB 667 DDR2 - 2x512MB SO-DIMM

* 100GB Serial ATA drive (7200rpm)

* 17" 1080P (1920x1200) Display

* 512MB Nvidia Geforce 7900GTX Go.

* 8x DVD/RW

* Power Adapter

* 9 Cell Battery

Price: ?1892.75

I think i just OwNeD the MacBook;) ;)

512MB of memory? 2 inches thick? - no illuminated keyboard? not an ALL aluminium construction. You didn't match it at all. Most of the price from the Apple notebooks is due to there small thin form pushing it all in that tiny tiny case and managing heat. They run silently without a Fan spinning when able. The dell notebook you specified has like 2 exhaust fans that run all the time. And it cannot legally triple boot OS X, Windows & Linux.

lol, I didn't think that this post would explode like this. I guess it's fairly even and you do get what you pay for, the only thing is that so many people have powerbooks etc yet I highly doubt they all need the extra software that a mac comes with or supports... which seems to be the only place the extra money is going.

Like I said, I'm only a student so spending ?1,894 on a laptop isn't even an option so student discounts from apple mean nothing at that price. I only want something for word processing, messenger and internet etc. I can get a Dell 630m, Pentium M 1.7ghz, 512mb RAM, 60GB HD for ?445 so I think I'm going to go with that because apple doesn't offer anything better for my uses.

what I don't quite get is why/how so many people spend so much on a powerbook etc when the uses seem to be so specific to make them worth the extra money... I guess it's apples marketing system at work again.

lol, I didn't think that this post would explode like this. I guess it's fairly even and you do get what you pay for, the only thing is that so many people have powerbooks etc yet I highly doubt they all need the extra software that a mac comes with or supports... which seems to be the only place the extra money is going.

Well from that you obviously dont need it, and in my opinion the only reason to get a Mac is for the stuff it offers (video, photo/music editing). I use the software that it comes with on a daily basis and the other stuff like pro tools pretty often.

And if you just wanted to get it for word processing etc why did you even consider a mac? when you know its meant for alot more, hence the higher price.

what I don't quite get is why/how so many people spend so much on a powerbook etc when the uses seem to be so specific to make them worth the extra money... I guess it's apples marketing system at work again.

If i tried to do the stuff i do on my Mac on a PC i would fail so badly. Macs are a creative machine, they are designed for the creative people, people who like to produce music, edit/produce videos and photo edit. I dont call that specific, its such a freedom area of computing, the skys your limit when it comes to that stuff and Macs are made for it, to excel in these areas, the areas which a windows machine cant do as well.

I could start producing a song, editing a movie straight off without any added software, straight from the box, good luck doing that on a windows machine. This is where is comes cheap, you might not think its cheap hardware wise, but when you see what comes built in you realise why, then when you want more and more software you will understand.

So clearly a Mac isnt for you, if it was, you would of had it by now, and understand what a Mac is designed for.

Well from that you obviously dont need it, and in my opinion the only reason to get a Mac is for the stuff it offers (video, photo/music editing). I use the software that it comes with on a daily basis and the other stuff like pro tools pretty often.

And if you just wanted to get it for word processing etc why did you even consider a mac? when you know its meant for alot more, hence the higher price.

I was fairly certain I didn't need one before I made the post, I was just unsure as to why there was such a big price difference.

I was looking at them because I had just been in the library and realised that almost everyone had one...and I'm willing to bet about 70% of them only used it for word processing. I was interested in trying something different from XP for a change and I don't mind admitting that they look pretty damn nice too.

on a side note... wouldn't it make sense for apple to produce basic budget laptops to get people more inclined to buy one and then in the future stick with mac? I can't really see why they dont make one without all the extra software and bells and whistles for people on a budget.

Edited by Brodel

Be the smart one and dont get one, which you are already doing, personally i think people who need it for word processing shouldnt have a Mac.

on a side note... wouldn't it make sense for apple to produce basic budget laptops to get people more inclined to buy one and then in the future stick with mac? I can't really see why they dont make one without all the extra software and bells and whistles for people on a budget.

Thats the job of a PC, not a Mac and keep it as that.

wouldn't it make sense for apple to produce basic budget laptops to get people more inclined to buy one and then in the future stick with mac? I can't really see why they dont make one without all the extra software and bells and whistles for people on a budget.

There called iBooks.

Be the smart one and dont get one, which you are already doing, personally i think people who need it for word processing shouldnt have a Mac.

Thats the job of a PC, not a Mac and keep it as that.

I think Apple should make budget PCs as well, with their awesome design and "culture" like Steve Jobs says... I think Apple can get rich pretty fast.

Atleast even if its not the budget Macs, I think Apple should release Mac OSX for all x86 processors. Many advantages in that. Although there would be lot of piracy...I think it could benefit Apple more, coz...more people using would encourage more developers.

And does that come built in with an awesome package like iLife? Where you have a pretty advance movie, video and photo editing program. Do you have a built in media centre, which comes with a controller? Plus OS X is a great operating system, you will have to shell out around i dunno ?300 for vista? i could get leopard for around ?100 if its based around Tigers price. On top of that i can get a discount off everything since im a student, so that ?2,059 turns into ?1,894 and since hes a student he can take advantage of that, get the next OS X at a discount rate, all other software. There are so many advanced programs just designed for the Mac, so if you are into music/video editing you have things like Pro Tools and Final Cut, industry stuff where as you dont get this with a micrsoft machine. You get what you pay for.

I can get a full retail version of Tiger OS X for ?58.75, what a damn good price. If you dont have iLife, thats only ?50, all the other things you need for a system comes cheap from Apple, you have to love it. You even have the luxury to run two operating systems, osx and windows, perfectly, apple have done it again.

So the thing i just quoted seems nothing now doesnt it

Im a student also, and i just get most of microsoft's software for free. sheeesh i get Visual Studio for free, can get office 2003 pro for ?59.99.

How can u call mac more productive than windows. Loading times are the same, Software loads as fast and does the same job.

If ure a professional u are going to be using the same packages, e.g. adobe.

So how does working on a different OS make u more productive, thats just complete garbage.

No it isnt made of out aluminium, but then again the XPS are damn fine looking laptops, and if you want a "1337" looking laptop all you would have to do is to contact Savrow or Voodoo and just get blown away by there amazing designs and laptops with battery lifes of upto 9hours.

I aint slating OSX but you claim it does a million things that you cannot otherwise do on winodws, such as be creative, use the thing without it being infected with spyware, or anything else for that matter such as viruses.

OSX is a good choice for digital media applications, and the best IMO, but it doesnt make you more creative by a long shot, no OS or software can do that.

Apples are expensive, and i came back with a cheaper and faster laptop with a GFX card in it that would probably cope with playing games at 1080p.

And to the quoter who said about having 2x512mb Sticks. you can configure to have 1 x 1Gb stick but you would be daft to pay extra and get rid of dual channel bandwidth.

the Mac Book, only has a 1440 x 900 resolution, the XPS has a true 1080P resoutlion, around 10x better for High Def movie editing.

It could probably also illegally run OSX and be on Par with a Macbook pro.

my 2p:whistle:histle:

Im a student also, and i just get most of microsoft's software for free. sheeesh i get Visual Studio for free, can get office 2003 pro for ?59.99.

How can u call mac more productive than windows. Loading times are the same, Software loads as fast and does the same job.

If ure a professional u are going to be using the same packages, e.g. adobe.

So how does working on a different OS make u more productive, thats just complete garbage.

No it isnt made of out aluminium, but then again the XPS are damn fine looking laptops, and if you want a "1337" looking laptop all you would have to do is to contact Savrow or Voodoo and just get blown away by there amazing designs and laptops with battery lifes of upto 9hours.

I aint slating OSX but you claim it does a million things that you cannot otherwise do on winodws, such as be creative, use the thing without it being infected with spyware, or anything else for that matter such as viruses.

OSX is a good choice for digital media applications, and the best IMO, but it doesnt make you more creative by a long shot, no OS or software can do that.

Apples are expensive, and i came back with a cheaper and faster laptop with a GFX card in it that would probably cope with playing games at 1080p.

And to the quoter who said about having 2x512mb Sticks. you can configure to have 1 x 1Gb stick but you would be daft to pay extra and get rid of dual channel bandwidth.

the Mac Book, only has a 1440 x 900 resolution, the XPS has a true 1080P resoutlion, around 10x better for High Def movie editing.

It could probably also illegally run OSX and be on Par with a Macbook pro.

my 2pence. :whistle::

If you are a professional video producer, music producer you will not be using windows. These are 2 very creative things, you have companies like Avid, dedicated to Apple, making hardware run hand in hand with Pro Tools, possibly the best music editing software in the world, all designed for Macs. You have Final Cut which is a very industry standard software for video editing, same with acid, all dedicated to Macs. Windows has none of that.

It doesnt make you more productive but the programs designed for Macs are for people into that stuff, which tend to be creative people, and you obviously want to do it good, Macs help you do it good, like i said, you have companies dedicated to Apple making the best software in the world for these creative hobbies/jobs, where as you dont for windows.

You are comparing a 17" system with a 15" system, thats Apples mid model, not the top end, before you compare wait till Apple release the full line, the 17" model.

Hi-Def movie editing, wait with what software? No company will use that, or any person who is into that when you have the best software in the world to do it. Whats the point in having that when the software provided is poor and horrible.

If you are a professional video producer, music producer you will not be using windows. These are 2 very creative things, you have companies like Avid, dedicated to Apple, making hardware run hand in hand with Pro Tools, possibly the best music editing software in the world, all designed for Macs. You have Final Cut which is a very industry standard software for video editing, same with acid, all dedicated to Macs. Windows has none of that.

It doesnt make you more productive but the programs designed for Macs are for people into that stuff, which tend to be creative people, and you obviously want to do it good, Macs help you do it good, like i said, you have companies dedicated to Apple making the best software in the world for these creative hobbies/jobs, where as you dont for windows.

You are comparing a 17" system with a 15" system, thats Apples mid model, not the top end, before you compare wait till Apple release the full line, the 17" model.

Hi-Def movie editing, wait with what software? No company will use that, or any person who is into that when you have the best software in the world to do it. Whats the point in having that when the software provided is poor and horrible.

Well i guess the whole Adobe Creative Suite is Complete Garbage, and well Adobe Premier, or Pinnacle / Avid Liquid Professional is a joke.

How can you say that the mostly used platform contains no software available.

I really dont see you arguement, you say that all editing software is a joke for windows, when it is far from it.

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However, if you need to access the NAND Flash card or CMOS battery, then eight more screws (four on each side) need to be removed in order to take off the rear panel with the 120mm fan, and then the motherboard can be lifted off and removed from the SATA connector PCB. There's also no risk of threading the screw holes, because the four that hold the shell in place are metal on metal, while the screws that hold the rear panel on do screw into plastic. Either way, like last time when I reviewed the F4-425 plus, I was just happier to see larger screws being used. Overall, it follows some great improvements in build quality from the 2024 series and earlier. Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to a "Start panel", initially I didn't see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • well you can add a GPU for around $500, that's still around the price of Steam Machine but overall significantly better in performance.
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