TerraMaster F4 SSD review: It's a palm-sized powerful media class 4-bay NAS

Last summer, I reviewed a couple of NAS devices from brands that weren't so well known that consist entirely of SSD bays (1) (2), dumping the traditional spinning HDDs. As I said at the time, I am definitely a fan of SSD-based NAS', because they are far quieter and far more energy efficient —however, the initial cost can be quite eye-watering. As such, TerraMaster got in on the all-SSD act with its beast, the F8 SSD Plus, which we reviewed last September.

Fast forward to today, and TerraMaster is back with the smaller, but newer F4 SSD, which is a 4-bay all-SSD NAS, and I took it for a spin. I personally own a HDD-based NAS, but when I can afford to, I will move to an all-SSD-based solution. I mostly use mine for Plex and cloud backup of important files. Aside from a few other things, as well as setting up some Docker containers, so long as there is a clear tutorial, that's about the extent of my expertise in the realm of network-attached storage devices. It's an ongoing learning experience.

Here are the most important specifications:

As you can see from the specs, this is definitely a media-class NAS. The Intel N95 was introduced in Q1 of 2023 with support for HDMI 2.1, LPDDR5, DDR5 and DDR4, and a max TDP of 15W.

The F4 SSD comes with 8GB, meaning we no longer have to live with NAS makers like Synology, believing that 4GB (in 2025) is plentiful for a Home/SOHO NAS device that many will consider using for home streaming purposes. First impressions are important, and the specs certainly are exciting while still managing to keep costs in check with the competition.

First impressions

The packaging looks quite different from the traditional TerraMaster packaging, which is usually a cream-colored box. It looks quite premium, with an image of the F4 SSD printed on the side of the box, along with highlighting of some of its features. Inside the box, everything you need to get yourself started is included.

In the box

• F4 SSD TNAS device
• Power adapter
• LAN cable (CAT 6)
• Quick guide [full online guide]
• Limited warranty notice
• Screws (extra for M.2 slots)

Unlike the F8 SSD Plus, a box of heat-sinks, thermal pads and rubber bands is not included in the box with the F4 SSD, so you might need to consider if you need that.

Update June 25: My contact got back to me after reading this review and told me the reason they do not include heatsinks for the SSDs:

F4 SSD doesn't need a heatsink because it has intelligent temperature-controlled dual fans to actively dissipate the heat, and adding a heatsink may block the air ducts instead of affecting the cooling effect.

Design

This thing is small and light! I placed a TEAMGROUP QX 4TB 3D NAND QLC SATA III SSD next to it for a size comparison; this thing barely takes any space. It also has a textured finish, which gathers fingerprint marks; however, there are no glossy parts at all.

It kind of looks like an external HDD, like a WD Elements Desktop. If it were built for that purpose, you could imagine it only ever fitting one traditional HDD, but here, we can place four M.2 SSDs in it.

The front is completely smooth, and you just have the F4 SSD sticker. It would have been nice to have a USB port here, but this thing is so small it really doesn't matter that they are on the back.

Coming around to the back, from top to bottom, you have a Type-C USB port, two more Type A USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports, a single 5 GbE Ethernet port, an HDMI port and a connector for the barrel port power source. The reset pinhole can also be found on the outside of this unit, unlike the F4-424 Pro, where it is situated inside the unit. There's no Kensington Security Slot present, which is a bit of a shame considering it's a data storage device.

On the bottom there is a thumb screw that holds the outer casing in place.

On the left and right of the F4 SSD, you will find a TERRAMASTER logo imprint, which does not double as vents to expel heat, which I found to be a bit of a strange decision, considering one logo literally flanks the M.2 SSDs inside the F4 SSD.

On the top, it consists mostly of a vent with the power button situated near the back, which is lit white when powered on. On the bottom, there are quite large rubber feet that are almost as wide as the unit itself; they have a decent height, too, between 0.5 and 1cm. This is to assist the fans, which gives the unit a decent surface clearance. The fans are intake, but considering there is no dust filter, that might be a cheap mod you could do yourself.

Upon removing the thumb screw around the back, you can slide the panel off to reveal the M.2 slots. Four are on one side, helpfully marked PCIe 3.0 x1 or PCIe 3.0 x2. On the other side, the single 8GB DDR5 4800MT/s SODIMM is populated into the top slot.

As mentioned in my previous TerraMaster review, the support staff actually encourages installing whatever the hell you want on their devices. However, the bootloader USB has been changed to a 256 GB NAND Flash memory card from MXIC. You can see in the above images it is screwed into a ten-pin connector; I removed it so you can see it better. Here is the product website for it. This makes it a little more difficult to backup and flash something else on it.

I asked my contact why TerraMaster opted to use a flash card instead of a USB stick for the bootloader and was told:

"Compared to traditional USB drives, flash memory cards are more durable and offer greater stability and reliability. They help prevent startup failures caused by poor contact issues."

So there you have it. My point is that it does make it more difficult to manage the bootloader.

As you can see in the above images, it is pretty simple to populate with the fiddly preinstalled M.2 screws. TerraMaster even includes a couple more M.2 screws in the box, I guess in case you end up losing one or two of the little buggers! I did suggest to my contact to pass on feedback to think about switching to latches or push/pull clips to make these SSD NAS' really toolless.

Setup

BIOS

The F4 SSD includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends, and you can set up pretty much everything here except for the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS. However, above that choice, you can enable or disable booting to the TOS (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 always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it.

Initial Setup

The F4 SSD ships with TOS 6. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4 SSD can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local or if that doesn't work, by 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 quite straightforward, through a wizard, and is outlined below.

One thing I'd like to note, and actually forgot to do with previous reviews, is that you are warned before starting the TNAS initialization to ensure that you are using disks from the "official recommended compatibility list" our previously mentioned TEAMGROUP MP44Q 4TB NVMe SSDs is not featured there; in fact they only list a few major vendors like Samsung, Crucial, Western Digital, Seagate, and Lexar among a few other brands.

Gallery: F4 SSD Initialization and setup

In addition, I am pleased to report that the last step to complete the system administrator's email address confirmation now actually works. The last time I attempted this was back in December 2024 with the F9-500 Pro review, where it still was not working.

If you pre-populate the F4 SSD with SSDs, then part of that onboarding process starts to create a storage pool using TRAID, which is TerraMaster's own flavor of RAID 5, in which different-size drives can be used, and no space is lost. Generally speaking, an equivalent-sized disk will be used for redundancy, so this allows you to size up as you go, replacing drives in the future.

When you enter the TOS 6 desktop, you are guided by a few helpful hints, which I also captured in the above screenshots. The last step also opened the Security Advisor and displayed four risks: File System Snapshot, HTTP/HTTPS port, Security isolation mode, and SPC, which can be managed directly by clicking on each of them.

Post setup

Initialization of the pool took around 38 minutes, and left me with a volume of just 465GB for some reason, even though I also had a 2TB SSD installed. This stage of initialization of the storage pool still seems buggy, and I would prefer a step during setup to manually assign the installed drives to a Storage Pool and/or Hyper Cache. I ended up having to delete the automatically created Storage Pool and recreate it myself with the largest SSD in the F4 SSD.

Gallery: F4 SSD Storage Pool and Hyper Cache setup

I also assigned a Hyper Cache drive, but for some reason, it would only let me select the Samsung 970 Evo (250GB) SSD, even though it is not on the compatibility list.

As you may see above, I was also able to create a TRAID Storage Pool of two MP44Q 4TB NVMe SSDs ($224.99 on Amazon or Newegg) that TEAMGROUP supplied us with. These SSDs are inside the TerraMaster D4 SSD, which is connected via USB to the F4 SSD.

Next, I ran a CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 24H2 PC connected over the 5 GbE port of the F4 SSD. As you can see, it is well within acceptable ranges. Although the D4 SSD showed quicker read and randoms, write speed was a little down compared to the local Storage Pool, but still impressive.

TOS 6 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 that aren't really in the scope of this review. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4 SSD will work great if your users are direct playing the streams.

However, some of the apps could use some work or major upgrades. As I said in my previous review of the F8 SSD Plus, after linking my Reolink video doorbell to Surveillance Manager, there is still no dedicated client app in Windows or on mobile, like you can find with Synology Surveillance Client, and there are no timelines or event markers on the Live view.

There's (kind of) an app for that!

I mean, there is a mobile app that can be found in the Play Store under "TNAS Mobile" but all this does is give you access to manage the NAS system on mobile along with backed up Files, Photos and Media. There is no Surveillance Manager plugin, or any app management available through their mobile app.

I feel like TerraMaster should support their own core apps with mobile versions. And with Synology continuing to alienate the homelab, and small business customers, this is an area TerraMaster should capitilize on. Win over your competition's customers by offering them a way out of Synology locking down their products with own brand storage and memory options!

Conclusion

This is certainly a device with one thing in mind: being small and quiet. The Intel N95 inside the F4 SSD is capable of running your home streaming and virtual machines, but you'll need to keep your expectations in check. It's a low-power processor, so while not on the high-end, it can handle multiple virtual machines if you are not running extremely demanding workloads or have multiple people streaming at the same time. It could also replace your dated HTPC or server for a more energy-efficient, low-powered solution.

If you can't really afford to go all out on M.2 disks (as they are still pretty expensive in large capacities) you can expand storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5 or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link and populating it with cheaper traditional HDDs or 2.5-inch SATA SSDs to expand on storage.

It goes without saying that this thing is really quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past two weeks, and without spinning HDDs, you aren't going to hear anything but (maybe) the bottom fans, but I couldn't hear them over the sounds of my main PC next to it. TerraMaster says that the F4 SSD puts out up to 19dB of noise, and I believe them.

The only downside I can still think of is the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there will be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. The apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected, such as an OpenVPN connection routing all traffic through it even though the remote gateway was disabled (which is still broken six months later).

You may also see that I have listed the bootloader in the Pro and Con section of our verdict image, this is because the switch to a SSD Flash card makes it quicker to boot, and more reliable, but also more difficult to easily switch to something else like TrueNAS or UnraidFor me, despite this it still gets a thumbs up from me. Future-proof yourself with this low-powered home media-class SSD NAS that fits in the palm of your hand, and you can buy it right now.

Coupon

Neowin readers in the U.S. can apply the AP4ORXD7 coupon during checkout to save 10% off the $399.99 MSRP, bringing the price down to $359.99 at Amazon.

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