TerraMaster F2-212 review

TerraMaster has caught with an aesthetic of an aluminium tube with sliver-painted plastic end-caps that has wanted a revamp for some years.

With the F2-212, reviewed right here, and its F4-212 bigger brother, a brand new minimalist styling has been revealed that makes these merchandise look a lot nearer to these of Synology in look.

Nonetheless, TerraMaster at all times likes to take the trail much less worn, and the F2-212 diverges from the earlier TerraMaster F2-210 in some essential ways in which might make this the entry-level NAS to personal.

Relying on the mannequin chosen, F2-212 or F4-212, this is similar NAS system, however the F2-212 has twin drive bays, whereas the F2-214 gives locations for 4 2.5- or 3.5in HDD or SSDs. As well as, Terrmaster additionally makes a 3rd associated machine, the U4-212, which is a rack-mounted chassis with 4 drive bays.

These entry-level machines lack the Intel Celeron processors, NVMe slots and upgradable reminiscence, that are options that TerraMaster’s higher-end NAS merchandise supply.

However even with out a few of these issues, the F2-212 has a number of options that may shock many and will concern the likes of Synology and QNAP.

Design & Construct

• New styling
• No reminiscence upgrades
• Drive trays don’t lock

As talked about, the F2-212 has embraced a brand new black minimalist look that’s decidedly extra business-like than the earlier silver TerraMaster motif.

Whereas simplicity is nice, on this case, the designers may need taken the function discount barely too far. Consequently, the entrance of the NAS sports activities solely two drive bays, a label and three tiny LED indicators. There aren’t any front-facing USB ports, and even the ability button is relocated to the rear.

On the again is the ability swap, two USB ports and a gigabit LAN port, together with a safety slot and the ability provide inlet. The exterior development is totally plastic, however the texture and embedded logos make for a complicated look, even when TerraMaster caught a large yellow assist sticker on one facet.

Inside is a pressed metal cage on which the plastic drive trays trip, and the motherboard is vertically mounted. A sneaky look inside reveals that the reminiscence shouldn’t be slot-mounted, however it’s a part of the mainboard and, due to this fact not upgradable.

As an alternative of the standard laptop computer PSU, the F2-212 has a region-specific energy socket brick, and the UK pin format PSU is made to output 12v at 4A (48W).

One of many barely odd and doubtlessly problematic options is the drive trays that aren’t like every from earlier TerraMaster designs I’ve seen.

It has a sprung launch mechanism that doesn’t lock, so inquisitive fingers might simply dislodge a drive whereas it was working, leading to disaster.

The engineering TerraMaster used reveals that the F2-212 was designed from the attitude of being cheap to assemble however inherently dependable. However these priorities haven’t considerably undermined its NAS performance for many who desire a simple-to-deploy gadget for media serving or private cloud companies.

Specs & Options

• Realtek 1619B SoC
• Solely two USB ports
• One is USB 3.0

The place the extra highly effective NAS machines are actually utilizing Intel Celeron or AMD Ryzen platforms, entry-level designs just like the F2-212 nonetheless use ARM SoC programs on which this whole class of machine was conceived.

That stated, the SoC on this NAS is a current design, the Realtek 1619B, a chip initially made to be used in TV containers. It makes use of Cortex-A55 microarchitecture and consists of measurement cores that may every run at as much as 1.3GHz.

The utmost reminiscence capability on that SoC is 4GB, however on this implementation, it’s equipped with simply 1GB of RAM with no means to extend that quantity. Alongside the hex-core CPU, this SoC additionally has a Mali-G51 MP3 GPU with transcoding talents that may convert video in real-time.

A function of this silicon that isn’t used right here by TerraMaster is that it has built-in Wi-Fi assist and Bluetooth, however it does use USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet performance.

USB is concentrated into two ports, one being USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.2 Gen 1) and the opposite USB 2.0.

If this design has a weak spot, it’s that just one port has the sooner USB 3.0 spec and that there are solely two USB ports in complete. USB 2.0 ports are fantastic for connecting printers however for these wanting to make use of exterior drives or a 2.5GbE LAN port adapter, solely having a single port for this use might be limiting.

It may be attainable to make use of a USB hub to assist mitigate this situation, however I wouldn’t purchase it based mostly on that assumption. TerraMaster does make a 2.5GbE LAN adapter that may work with this machine, in order that may be the way in which to go.

As every drive bay can take as much as 22TB capability drives, you may put as much as 44TB on this one tiny enclosure. Or, you may select to reinforce the efficiency by mixing a standard arduous drive with a SATA SSD.

Efficiency

• Single Gigabit LAN
• 1GB of reminiscence
• USB 2.5GbE LAN adapter choice

With the F2-212 out of the field, the most effective efficiency you may realistically anticipate is round 115MB/s over the Gigabit Ethernet, which is the theoretical restrict for this interface.

As a single standard arduous drive ought to have the ability to attain that velocity virtually no matter its specification, utilizing an SSD to cache that drive wouldn’t present any profit.

Nonetheless, with a 2.5GbE LAN port that may be added as an improve, the velocity of that interface is quicker than a single standard drive. In that situation, one strategy is to cache a single HDD drive utilizing a SATA SSD, or one other to make use of two HDDs in a stripe for efficiency in a RAID 0 configuration.

The F2-212 can use any of those two choices or a 3rd methodology of SATA SSDs as storage to ship greater than sufficient efficiency to saturate the LAN, even at 2.5GbE.

With solely 1GB of RAM and no means to improve it, the variety of apps you may run isn’t large, however it will be sufficient to run Plex and private cloud companies.

These eager to run a lot of apps might want to have a look at a NAS that isn’t ARM-powered, utilizing an Intel or AMD CPU to deal with extra processing and nice RAM.

In contrast with older designs, the Realtek 1619B is significantly better, and as a quad-core processor, it doesn’t are inclined to get overrun like among the prior dual-core NAS processors. This chip helps show output, however there aren’t any HDMI ports on the F2-212.

As already revealed, it’s attainable to place a USB 2.5GbE LAN adapter on this machine, though, on the time of writing our overview, I haven’t seen this merchandise to check how that addon performs.

The snag with utilizing this selection is that attaining the 230MB/s ranges of that interface would require both two arduous drives mounted in RAID 0 (striped) mode or one drive with an SSD caching studying and writing.

With a machine with solely two bays and a single USB 3.0 port, decisions have to be made that may be averted on a NAS with extra bays or USB ports.

That stated, in comparison with many NAS makers that don’t permit for two.5GbE adapters or to make use of SSDs as storage or cache on their entry-level {hardware}, it gives the F2-212 with extra choices than most options.

Worth & Availabilty

The value of the TerraMaster F2-212 is simply £169 within the UK on Amazon, and the USB 2.5GbE LAN adapter is one other £30 for many who need that further efficiency.

US prospects can discover it for $169.99 on Amazon and Newegg.com, which appears affordable for an entry-level NAS with this specification.

One situation for TerraMaster is that the virtually identically specified Synology DS223j is just round $25 extra in most areas, and it helps the Synology DSM 7.2 OS and its related software program platform.

Nonetheless, the Synology NAS doesn’t assist USB 2.5GbE LAN adapters, and a few triple-A DSM app titles are lacking from these made accessible for the DS223j.

Subsequently, in case you are shopping for the DS223j due to the Synology apps, it’s essential verify that the software program you wish to use is supported on that machine, and also you additionally want to think about that the place the F2-212 has a number of enlargement pathways which are lacking from the DS223j.

The DS223j does have two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, permitting for extra USB storage enlargement in the event you intend to make use of it for file sharing.

Examine our chart of the most effective NAS drives for extra choices.

Do you have to purchase the TerraMaster F2-212?

It’s arduous to speak in regards to the F2-212 with out mentioning the Synology DS223j since, on paper, these have very related specs.

With the prevalence of the Synology software program packages and a preferable USB format, the additional value of the DS223j is tempting.

Nonetheless, whereas the {hardware} is comparable, TerraMaster designers are a lot much less paranoid about damaging the gross sales of the higher-specification NAS from this model. Subsequently, the F2-212 consists of the power to improve to 2.5 GbE and use SATA SSDs for storage and caching, that are options lacking from the Synology NAS.

The place Gigabit Ethernet limits the DS223j, the F2-212 can switch information at twice that velocity, saving a lot of time for these dumping massive video information to and from their NAS.

Additionally, on the F2-212, utilizing an SSD internally is worth it to cache a single massive HDD, whereas, with the Synology DS223j, there’s little level for the reason that HDD can saturate the LAN port.

You need to use 22TB drives on this NAS, which permits for as much as 44TB internally in the event you don’t use RAID 1 mirror mode. An outlay of $550 ($350 for a single Seagate Iron Wolf 22TB) should buy a system with sufficient area for a humungous quantity of films, music and pictures.

That’s an enormous cause for purchasing this NAS over different entry-level machines, because it gives options Synology doesn’t embody in its home-orientated merchandise, solely in enterprise fashions.

General, with a complete value of round $200 for the F2-212, together with the two.5 GbE adapter and the power to make use of any capability SATA drives, that is the right first NAS for a lot of prospects.

Though, for these with greater than two drives helpful, its F4-212 brother may be the higher selection.

Specs

• CPU: Realtek 1619B
• GPU: ARM Mali-G51 MP3
• RAM: 1GB DDR4 (not upgradable)
• Drive Bays: 2x 3.5/2.5 SATA
• M.2 Drive Slots: N/A
• Most Drives with Growth: 7 utilizing D5-300C enlargement
• USB: 1x USB 3.2 Gen1, 1x USB 2.0
• Video Outputs: N/A
• Raid Varieties: RAID 0/1, Single, JBOD
• Weight: 1.3 Kg
• Dimensions: 222 x 119 x 154 mm
• Networking: 1x 1GbE Ethernet (100/1000)
• OS: TOS 5.1
• Inside File Programs: Btrfs, EXT4
• Exterior File Programs: EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+, exFAT
• OS Languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Magyar, Chinese language, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese and Russian