TerraMaster just pulled a quiet but meaningful hardware swap inside its 4+3 hybrid NAS, and the new F4-425 Pro feels less like a refresh and more like a course correction. It keeps the same physical chassis that crams four SATA bays and three M.2 NVMe SSD slots into a compact aluminum box, but now you can choose between two octa-core Intel processors that shift the performance envelope noticeably.
Two octa-core paths, two different thermal personalities
The base model arrives with an Intel Core i3-N305 (Alder Lake-N), an 8-core chip that turbos to 3.8 GHz, backed by 8GB of DDR5 non-ECC RAM and a 15W TDP. The higher-tier configuration swaps in the newer Intel Core 3 N350 (Twin Lake) — essentially a tuned refresh with a peak 3.9 GHz clock, 16GB of DDR5, and a more restrained 7W TDP. Both CPUs share the same 6MB cache and 32EU Intel UHD graphics, so the real-world delta between them is slim; the memory bump matters more for multitasking. What’s quietly important for a box that often lives in living rooms or small offices is that the N350 can run cooler while offering essentially the same compute, which translates to lower fan speeds and that 20.9 dB(A) idle noise figure staying honest.
Hybrid storage meets dual 5GbE and USB 3.2
Storage flexibility is the whole point of the “4+3” designation. You get:
- 4x SATA bays for 3.5-inch HDDs or 2.5-inch SSDs, support for up to 132TB total (32TB per drive) with hot-swap
- 3x M.2 2280 NVMe slots (PCIe 3.0 x1) for SSDs up to 8TB each, adding another 24TB of fast flash
RAID modes cover the usual suspects — 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, and TerraMaster’s own TRAID/TRAID+ — and the internal file systems are BTRFS or EXT4. Around back, two 5GbE RJ45 ports offer link aggregation and SMB Multichannel, while three USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports (10Gbps) and one USB-C (10Gbps) give peripheral expansion headroom. A single HDMI 2.1 port serves terminal-only output, so don’t expect media playback, but the chipset can transcode H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, and VC-1 at up to 4K/60 FPS if you pipe video through Plex or similar.
TOS 7 brings AI search that actually means something
The most consequential change may not be the silicon but the shipping OS. TerraMaster’s new TOS 7, built on Linux 6.12, bakes in OpenClaw AI for natural-language file queries — you can ask the NAS to find “photos from last summer’s trip” without navigating folders. TerraMaster claims 120% improvement in search accuracy and a 10x speedup for queries, and the new release also includes Smart ISO mounting (double-click to open), a unified recycle bin, per-port bandwidth limits, and a revamped notification center. For anyone who manages a NAS for a small team or a media-heavy household, those AI-assisted workflows cut down on the drudgery of manual file management, and that’s the thread that ties this box to the portable AI conversation: it’s edge storage with an intelligence layer that makes local data more accessible.
Pricing lands at $559.99 for the Core i3-N305/8GB variant and $669.99 for the Core 3 N350/16GB model through TerraMaster’s own store (with a promotional 20% discount at time of writing), while Amazon lists both at $699.99 and $799.99 respectively. Compared to the earlier F4-425 Plus with an N150 quad-core, the Pro asks for a meaningful premium, and the real question is whether your workload can feel the difference of those extra four cores and the AI-infused TOS. For small creative teams that treat a NAS as a low-latency asset library, the answer is likely yes. For a household that just wants Time Machine and Plex, the older Plus might still be the smarter buy.