Aion Online


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Trial accounts are probably going to be awhile.

And I have only ever played WOW, LOTRO, AOC, WAR. And of those I only ever really played LOTRO for a long time, others were less then a month. So I am not one to ask lol

Out of curiosity, what is the overall verdict of this game. I know its not been out for very long but would you guys recommend it over other MMO's? And is there any way to get a free trial account?

Eh, wouldn't recommend it over WoW exactly, as they're both really decent games. It's just that, right now after having played WoW for so long, this game is a lot fresher. Not to mention this has to be one of the first times where, aside from being excited about the graphical aspect of the game, that I've actually gotten caught up in the environment. I've never been able to do that with WoW honestly, simply because the graphics are limited. Sure, in WoW, there are places I like, but not this much. Hell, you can ask my girlfriend too as I wasn't able to shut up about it last night when we got to a new area. :p

As for the gameplay though, it's great. The way DoTs and HoTs don't stack really ensures that a group will want to diversify their party's DPS which keeps people from being left behind simply due to class stacking in other games. Of course, that doesn't mean it will hurt you too much for bringing 2 of the same class either, but it feels simply like a bit of an incentive to really.

Honestly, when I first looked at the game, I thought it was gonna be just another Korean MMO where everything is pretty, and the gameplay / leveling is boring. After playing the open beta though, my perspective has really changed. The combat system is pretty reactive, with chained attacks that become quite fun as opposed to simple rotations and mashing Overpower or something in WoW. The chains can also split, for example with a Warrior's early choice being to follow up with an additional attack or a defense boost. Overall though, it seems to be a really fun system.

I could go on, but my thoughts are kind of scattered this morning. Plus, I'm AFK in game writing this, so lemme get back to my character. :happy:

Oh, and for those that may need help while questing, or just want to look something up, I've found this site to be quite useful:

http://www.aionarmory.com

So far this weekend I haven't managed to even play one char. I understand that things are going to be manic at the weekends but it still doesnt stop it from frustrating me. Oh dear.

aion0004t.jpg

aion0005d.jpg

I've been waiting for like an hour so far and I'm still 318/2000. What are the producers doing? I mean people don't pay to wait in hour long queues. Not to mention the lag in towns. If it weren't for these things it would have been a great game.

Uh it's weird that you are waiting that long, they changed some settings and added servers, max wait time is 15 minutes now. You must be having bad luck or something.

They're in the EU which as far I understand it hasn't had new servers added yet. But they were supposed be putting up 1 or 2 new English servers and another for each language, at least that's what I remember reading.

my god, suprising that the Personal Store patch didnt help things, did somewhat in US, there is still a queue on Azphel ( one of the popular servers ) but its about 400atm w/20 min queue.

im currently 182 w/10 min

So far this weekend I haven't managed to even play one char. I understand that things are going to be manic at the weekends but it still doesnt stop it from frustrating me. Oh dear.

snip

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I'm a World of Warcraft player thinking about trying Aion what should I know? - I've looked at reviews and some 'Aion from a WoW players Perspective' videos on Youtube but these are focusing mainly on the early beta with the level caps and such so they don't really go in to depth.

I'd like to know off the bat, how many Servers are there (In the EU)?

How many users do they have roughly on each server?

What can you buy with the games currency? (Epic Gear, Mounts ?)

How does Flying work and at what level does it begin?

Does the game support Add-ons?

PVP is it fun?

Do they have 'Battlegrounds' like in WoW?

Thanks (Y)

Hah, oh dear. With 5 minutes to go, windows decided to install automatically an update for my ethernet, resulting in a loss of internet and Aion just quit. 90minutes wasted, all I want to do is play the ****ing game. Goodie another 60 minute wait. If I hadn't of spent so much money on it (?45) I would of given up and came back in about a year.

I hate the fact that some people are having a bad time, it's really a good game.

And the weird thing is the past 3 days I can't play, keeps crashing within 5 minutues, been working since closed beta perfectly, and the first couple days of launch, but for some reason it's not working and NCSoft Support and AionSource are horrible are answering my questions. Yet I am still loving Aion. I hope everyone gets there issues resolved.

I'm a World of Warcraft player thinking about trying Aion what should I know? - I've looked at reviews and some 'Aion from a WoW players Perspective' videos on Youtube but these are focusing mainly on the early beta with the level caps and such so they don't really go in to depth.

I'd like to know off the bat, how many Servers are there (In the EU)?

How many users do they have roughly on each server?

What can you buy with the games currency? (Epic Gear, Mounts ?)

How does Flying work and at what level does it begin?

Does the game support Add-ons?

PVP is it fun?

Do they have 'Battlegrounds' like in WoW?

Thanks (Y)

I'd like to know off the bat, how many Servers are there (In the EU)?

Here is the server list for the EU:

http://uk.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/

Please note that they have certain servers for certain languages and they are labled as such in game(eng,french, and german languages), but I'm not sure on which is which. Also, at this point (Sunday) queues are quite bad in the EU, so you're better off waiting a few more days as they are in the process of adding new servers.

How many users do they have roughly on each server?

Unknown really, 4000-5000 players per server on at a time would be my guess.

What can you buy with the games currency? (Epic Gear, Mounts ?)

Almost anything gear wise, skill books, crafting materials, and so on, there are no mounts in the game.

How does Flying work and at what level does it begin?

It's pretty easy really. I mapped the flight take off and land buttons to my extra mouse buttons but they aren't by default. You can only fly in certain areas but you can glide anywhere, which is just jumping and then tapping the space bar again to pull out your wings.

Does the game support Add-ons?

None yet, please god none ever other than cosmetic ones like changing the UI.

PVP is it fun?

From what I've seen, yes, quite. And pretty well balanced, as someone else said, the way the game is set up it promotes somewhat tactcial pvp with how you set up your groups by not allowing dots and hots to stack, from the same class type. Some see this as a bad thing and it definitely has it's cons, but it also has it's pluses too as it doesn't encourage people to zerg.

Do they have 'Battlegrounds' like in WoW?

Not technically. They have duels and arenas in your factions main city where you can fight your own people, but no battlegrounds like WoW. The main focus for pvp in this game is open world pvp.

I hate the fact that some people are having a bad time, it's really a good game.

And the weird thing is the past 3 days I can't play, keeps crashing within 5 minutues, been working since closed beta perfectly, and the first couple days of launch, but for some reason it's not working and NCSoft Support and AionSource are horrible are answering my questions. Yet I am still loving Aion. I hope everyone gets there issues resolved.

Do you get an error message? If so what does it say?

my god, suprising that the Personal Store patch didnt help things, did somewhat in US, there is still a queue on Azphel ( one of the popular servers ) but its about 400atm w/20 min queue.

im currently 182 w/10 min

Seriously, it didn't fix anything? Three days ago at this time the queue would be 3+ hours... To each their own I guess. The queue is now actually waiting for people that are playing the game to log off, instead of *******s afking in a store because they wanted to bypass the queue.

Edited by trag3dy

The two new European servers should be up tonight if they aren't up already at the time of this post already. Remember that the game has only been officially out for roughly 2 days going on 3 in Europe. Hope this certainly helps those of you in the EU.

Those in the US really shouldn't be complaining at all. There are 3 servers not counting the new West coast server or the oceanic server that have zero queues during peak hours. If you're unwilling to move, that's your problem.

Yea I did, didn't read it though. Will do that next time.

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No offense, but seriously, you're on a tech site. That's like... :rofl: the first step you take. :rofl:

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No offense, but seriously, you're on a tech site. That's like... :rofl: the first step you take. :rofl:

Well I wasn't really asking for help, just stating my issue. I have been looking up on it with the AionSource forums and such. So I knew the log would be important, just have not looked at it yet because many people are having similar but different issues, I assumed those would be fixed and mine would go away lol

Being a long time WoW player, here is a list of the things I think that Aion improves and indeed fails on. In my e-pinion of course :p

Pros:

  • The ability for the quest to mark on your map exactly where to go and provide almost wiki style links to find out further information. Finding someone or something needed in a quest is so much easier and reduced the need to alt-tab out to the internet to get anwers.
  • Love the notepad feature. Someone in the main chat window could find someone you need to kill (the quest failed to point it out, Tutty anyone?) so they can post links which when clicked show you on the map. But you can right click and save these links to your personal notepad to get later. Really nice touch.
  • Your own private store. Great idea, although being abused at the moment, I saw a guy selling level 4 belts, for 999 just so he could stay logged in. Hope they fixed that by now.
  • An interesting downtime idea. In WoW if you were injured badly in a fight you would have to eat/drink to restore energy. Here you just sit down. Its quite funny actually when by just sitting on the floor your whole health is restored to max in mere seconds. Not sure how that works in later levels but its fun now. Saves tonnes of food/water etc. Its no fun as a mage to keep drinking to restore mana and this idea from Aion improves things alot.
  • Instant mail. Someone sends you a mail in game and in WoW you have to find a postbox, but here can click a button and the mail is literally delivered to your feet no matter where you are. Very handy, but it feels like we are being lazy :p

Cons:

  • Money. Now, ive only played to level 8, but there seems to be one currency. Not Copper, silver and gold but one. So instead of an item costing 1g 20s it will cost you like 1200 kinah. Not too bad, but I feel its going to get worse later on, after all paying 190 kinah to fly from A to B, imagine what a max level weapon would cost?! 10000000000 kinah? You make alot of money from the start but in the grand scheme of things its not alot since items all cost alot too. Wow I have 900 kinah! Yea, you can spend all that on a level 5 chest peice.
  • Gathering. From what I've seen you can gather plants/ore etc just by clicking on it, saves the need for picks etc. But I don't like the way that you have to click on the resource about 3 times to get all from it. In WoW you can mine ore once and get all items and skills. Here you have to hope that somebody doesn't swoop in the take it from you, which I found a problem starting off. It was a bedlam trying to gather that first plant, with about 6 people around it all right clicking like idiots.
  • The collectors edition items. Now don't get me wrong, its nice to have items not many other people will have, but lets me clear, the items suck. Regardless of what bonuses they bring to your char, a pork pie hat, purple dye and black wings I can't use until much later on in the game aren't my idea of great things. I would prefer a cool cloak, black or indeed any colour you want dye any cooler buffs would be better. Its a small gripe but it does annoy me. Hip-Hop emote? lol

Lets be clear, I like the game, I think it takes WoW polishes it and trims off alot of the fat and your left with a solid fun game which stands alone amongst the other MMORPGS. It's early days and can only get better, and I hope the server issues and such are sorted with haste. If you have never played WoW I think you will enjoy this game alot more as unlike me, you won't be making comparisons all the time.

Just my 2 cents.

[*]Gathering. From what I've seen you can gather plants/ore etc just by clicking on it, saves the need for picks etc. But I don't like the way that you have to click on the resource about 3 times to get all from it. In WoW you can mine ore once and get all items and skills. Here you have to hope that somebody doesn't swoop in the take it from you, which I found a problem starting off. It was a bedlam trying to gather that first plant, with about 6 people around it all right clicking like idiots.

Probably you don't play WoW long time. Gathering ore, herbs only by one click was implemented few patches ago. Gathering using more clicks is also implemented in another games, like Runes of Magic. I don't like some changes they make in WoW (like this one).

Cons:

  • Money. Now, ive only played to level 8, but there seems to be one currency. Not Copper, silver and gold but one. So instead of an item costing 1g 20s it will cost you like 1200 kinah. Not too bad, but I feel its going to get worse later on, after all paying 190 kinah to fly from A to B, imagine what a max level weapon would cost?! 10000000000 kinah? You make alot of money from the start but in the grand scheme of things its not alot since items all cost alot too. Wow I have 900 kinah! Yea, you can spend all that on a level 5 chest peice.
  • Gathering. From what I've seen you can gather plants/ore etc just by clicking on it, saves the need for picks etc. But I don't like the way that you have to click on the resource about 3 times to get all from it. In WoW you can mine ore once and get all items and skills. Here you have to hope that somebody doesn't swoop in the take it from you, which I found a problem starting off. It was a bedlam trying to gather that first plant, with about 6 people around it all right clicking like idiots.
  • The collectors edition items. Now don't get me wrong, its nice to have items not many other people will have, but lets me clear, the items suck. Regardless of what bonuses they bring to your char, a pork pie hat, purple dye and black wings I can't use until much later on in the game aren't my idea of great things. I would prefer a cool cloak, black or indeed any colour you want dye any cooler buffs would be better. Its a small gripe but it does annoy me. Hip-Hop emote? lol

Lets be clear, I like the game, I think it takes WoW polishes it and trims off alot of the fat and your left with a solid fun game which stands alone amongst the other MMORPGS. It's early days and can only get better, and I hope the server issues and such are sorted with haste. If you have never played WoW I think you will enjoy this game alot more as unlike me, you won't be making comparisons all the time.

Just my 2 cents.

Being that you're a WoW player, you should certainly know that starting a new character without any previous characters to help you means you're starting at the very bottom basically. That said, the armor prices on white quality items is certainly relative for the most part. Kinah is pretty easy to get in the game, even better later, and just like WoW though, you probably don't want to spend your money on vendor priced white quality gear. The first thing to do would be to check the AH, which you will see in Pandaemonium or Sanctum, depending on your faction as well as the next town you level around. You can easily level without buying new gear 1-10, even as a squishy (yet powerful) sorcerer or something. Usually, I find someone selling green quality items at reasonable prices via a Private Store throughout that level range though. I usually have between 15-20k by the time I'm level 9 or 10. Of course, remember to not spend that before you buy your level 10 skills.

There is also a bit of dependency on the server you've chosen. I'm on a smaller populated server, and prices in AH are quite high. This is both good and bad, as it makes it harder to get gear initially through the broker, but real easy to make money off of materials and gear you pick up on the way. High populated servers like Azphel (which I played on) have tons of gear up and quite low prices. Still, this makes it hard to make money selling even uncommon items when people are selling them for say... 100 kinah over vendor price. Really makes the whole point kind of questionable. There is also a decent aspect to the broker though: you can only sell 10 items at a time. While this may seem bad to the individual, this certainly helps prevent auction monopolization that exists on WoW, where the prices end up getting marked up to insane levels.

Gathering is a bit slow, but there's an abundant supply of nodes around and, while it does take time, at least you get XP from doing it, so it's not a total drag. Friend of mine spent a couple hours farming Aether, only to find himself level gaining 80% and leveling around level 12-13 or so. My biggest concern for gathering is that it's a bit too sensitive. Targeting someone while gathering for instance stops the process, which also sucks because you essentially lose that hit. :/

As for the CE items, they're not meant to be overpowering, but really just to help you out throughout leveling. Having a blue hat you can use at level 1 (which I'm still wearing at level 17 btw), earrings you can use at 20, and wings you can use at 30... Makes it a bit more useful throughout the game rather than just at one point or another. I do get what you're saying though in terms of appearance. Personally, I wish they chose a different color that purple for the dyes. Oh, and the cloak idea can't really be done I wouldn't think, since when you become part of a legion, you wear a cloak with your legion symbol much like Guild Wars. They look pretty damn cool too, by the way. ;)

-----

Right now, I'm pretty pumped about one single "feature" I guess you'd call it alone: THERE IS NO DURABILITY IN THIS GAME!! Seriously, for some reason, I just noticed this the other day and, as a healer, it makes me happy knowing that my tank isn't going to have a ridiculous repair bill while we blaze through a group of guys, do some quests that normally call for a "group", and such. Takes a lot of pressure off as a healer. :yes:

Edited by dead.cell
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Before we dive in, you can view the different SKUs released so far since the 2025 series launched for Home and SMB users, with the most important specifications listed along with the MSRP listed below: SKU CPU Cores Memory Link Price F2-425 Intel N5095 4 4 GB DDR4 2.5 GbE x1 $249.99 F4-425 Intel N5095 4 4 GB DDR4 2.5 GbE x1 $369.99 F2-425 Plus Intel Core N150 4 8 GB DDR5 5 GbE x 2 $399.99 F4-425 Plus Intel Core N150 4 16 GB DDR5 5 GbE x 2 $569.99 F4-425 Pro Intel Core N305 8 8 GB DDR5 5 GbE x 2 $699.99 F4-425 Pro Intel Core N350 8 16 GB DDR5 5 GbE x 2 $799.99 The F2 in the product name means two 3.5-inch HDD bays, where F4 is four 2.5-inch bays. First impressions Like with the F8 SSD Plus packaging, the F4-425 Pro is using the upgraded box materials, which certainly look better than a plain cream colored box with TERRAMASTER stamped on the sides. The box gives off a premium feel and certainly adds a positive vibe to first impressions. In the box F4-425 Pro TNAS device Power adapter LAN cable (CAT 6) Quick guide [full online guide] Limited warranty notice Screws (for HDD bays) Stickers 2x rubber feet (spares) Design As has become kind of common with TerraMaster, certainly in the last three years, the 2025 F2- and F4-series have received a makeover that really adds to the premium feel of the NAS. Gone are the plastic shells, now replaced with an aluminum outer shell, with the front and back retaining the textured black plastic we saw on the 2024 models. Some key differences from the 2024 series include placing the power button back on the front, along with the addition of a Type A USB port. It's not much bigger or heavier either; in fact, it weighs 500 grams less than the F4-424 Pro. It's slightly shorter in height and depth (length), but only by a few millimeters. The front and back do retain a similar style to the 2024 series. On the front, you just have your four bays along with LED indicators for the HDDs and power. The welcomed change is having a USB port on the front for quick access, should you need to back up a USB drive, for example. Around the back, from top to bottom, you have a reset pin hole, an HDMI port, two 5 GbE Ethernet ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type A ports with a Type-C port below them, and a connector for the barrel port power source. Again, there's no Kensington Security Slot present, which is a bit of a shame considering it's a data storage device. Left side Right side On the left and right of the F4-425 Plus, it is completely smooth aluminum with a TERRAMASTER logo printed on both sides. On the bottom, there are some holes to assist ventilation. Unlike with the F4-425 Plus, the rubber feet did come unstuck during the teardown, which was also an issue on the 2023 series. It seems like other customers have lodged complaints about them, as TerraMaster now includes two spare rubber feet in the box, in case any of the preinstalled ones are lost; however, this seems more like a papering over the cracks solution rather than actually fixing the issue with better quality rubber stand-offs. There are also four screws that must be removed in order to access the internals. Teardown Upon removing the four screws, you can slide the device out of its shell to reveal the three NVMe M.2 slots (PCIe 3.0 X1) and single SODIMM slot connector, which is populated with a single 16GB DDR5 4800MT/s module. I added a couple of MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs (2 x 4TB) that can be availed on Amazon for $492.99 that TEAMGROUP supplied us with, along with a 250GB 970 Evo Plus that my colleague Chris White sent me by accident and let me keep a few years ago. As I have said in previous reviews, TerraMaster support staff actually encourage installing whatever you want on their devices, and happily, the USB port for the bootloader is now easily accessible should you want to use it for your own flavor of NAS OS, such as TrueNAS, Unraid, or maybe Xpenology. Yes, because TerraMaster has now switched to a 256 GB NAND Flash card (3rd photo above) for the TOS bootloader. This is also replaceable, but you can also simply add a USB bootloader, access the BIOS, and tell the F4-425 Pro to boot from that instead of the Flash card. Unlike earlier iterations of TerraMaster NAS, you don't have to tear this down any further than the four screws on the outer shell in order to be able to access and manage the memory, NVMe slots, and USB bootloader. 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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