TerraMaster F5-221 NAS Review - Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

This is my first adventure with a NAS from Terra Master. You probably haven’t heard of this company before. As for the performance and features, for the most part, the F5-221 did very well. The software feature set and extensive support for various protocols friendly to Windows, Mac, and Linux are great. The 2 GB of memory and Dual Core CPU performed just right, as expected. It’s a good solution not only for home use. This NAS is pretty energy efficient, the performance is right, and the noise level coming from the unit leaves nothing to be desired (if it's not the high revs chosen). It could be an FTP server; you can use it to upload images and music, make slideshows out of it, and display it on the webserver of the device, or just use it to watch photos and videos - for me, it was a good addition to the hardware setup. 

Performance

The transfer speeds that we reached were almost in line with the manufacturer’s declarations. With large files and a fast-enough HDD (or of course the SSDs) over a Gigabit connection, you can expect ~110-120 MB/sec on reads and almost 100 MB/s in writes. So, it can hardly go any faster with this type of Ethernet connection. It would be good to have 2.5 GigE here for sure, especially if you plan to use SSDs in the unit.

Pricing

At the time of writing, this NAS unit is listed with an MSRP of 359.99 USD. From the consumer’s point of view that is rather steep for a NAS device, but’s it’s quite affordable as a SOHO/business solution because you get five bays. It’s also an energy-friendly NAS server, and this should allow you to save you on your power bill because these devices often run 365/24/7. That said, it would be good to have at least 2.5 GigE (or even 10 GigE) instead of 1 GigE, as more people are starting to use the faster Ethernet these days. 

Final Words

It’s a fair offer for the price, and that’s why we’re granting the “Approved” award here. Five drive bays and an energy-efficient solution with 2 GB of RAM (which is expandable up to 6 GB) and a Dual Core Intel CPU at 359.99 USD is really ok. Keep in mind that you can install up to 80 TB of drives in this NAS. Given the number of devices that we use nowadays, that can not only connect to a network, but also provide streaming services (TVs, phones, laptops, PCs, tablets, and so on), it only makes sense to have something like this lying around. Of course, you can also use it as an FTP server, back up your data, upload images/music, and run other applications. It’s great to have a NAS to handle all these features, but you have to keep in mind that buying the unit is not the final cost here, as you also need to buy some drives to populate it with and this can be too much for some of the people. 

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