As prices come down and awareness spreads, network-attached storage (NAS) devices are becoming more popular beyond just the enterprise and creative users who were its traditional customer base. Whether you’re looking for a large storage bank for your terabytes of photos and videos, or you want an easy way to share your media to all the devices in your house, a NAS is probably the best solution for your needs.

The TerraMaster F2-423 is far from the most capable NAS on the market, but what it can do puts it a step ahead of most introductory machines. It can’t compete with its bigger brother, the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro which has four hard drive bays and enough processing power to run a gaming PC, but, at half the price, the F2-423 has enough spunk to stream without a hiccup, and it’s a huge step up from my crusty old external hard drive.

Price, specs, and availability

You can grab the TerraMaster F2-423 from a few sites, including Amazon, for $300 with overnight delivery on Amazon. You can also grab it directly from TerraMaster, but at $370, you’ll have to pay a bit extra for the privilege.

On the inside, the F2-423 has respectable specs. The whole thing is powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N5095 chip (commonly found in mini PCs and laptops) that tops out at 2.9GHz. It comes installed with 4GB of DDR4 memory which can be beefed up to 32GB if you think you’re going to have more than one concurrent user. And for the ultimate in bandwidth, it has two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. I only use one on a mesh network and don’t have any problems.

The F2-423 has two bays that can handle up to 20TB a piece on 3.5” and 2.5” SATA HDDs or 2.5” SATA SSDs. There are also two M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slots if you want to max out your cache storage.

What I like about the TerraMaster F2-423

For me, the best thing about the F2-423 is just how easy it is to get it up and running. Once I installed the hard drive and connected it to power and my network, it was just a matter of minutes before I was off and running. You access the NAS via a web interface: type in its IP address on your local network and sign in.

Once you’re logged in, all your interactions with the NAS are via the GUI-based TerraMaster OS. I like both the simplicity and familiarity of TerraMaster’s OS. It features a desktop with icons that are easy to understand and navigate. File Manager lets you see and manage your data. Control Panel lets you change your settings and see your hardware usage stats. App Center is where you can download and install any extra functionality it allows.

The first thing I did was install the Plex server in order to stream media throughout my house. How to use Plex could be its own article, but the process to set it up with the TerraMaster was straightforward. The server software was easy to find in the App Center, and setting up a movie library was an intuitive process. When it comes to streaming from the F2-423, the only hiccups I had were a weird video stutter on my Chromebook that would happen when accessing a particular menu using the touch screen. Otherwise, it worked like a charm. I stress tested it by streaming concurrently from three devices and the F2-423 didn’t even break a sweat.

File management was likewise very easy. You can mess with files via the OS interface, but it’s much easier and faster to do with SMB on your Windows File Explorer (which TerraMaster blatantly concedes, and even shows you how to accomplish). TerraMaster explains how to use Mac’s AFP protocol as well, but leaves unsaid how to use Chromebook’s My files app to interact with the content on your NAS (don’t worry, it’s easy).

What I don’t like about the TerraMaster F2-423

My least favorite aspect of the TerraMaster F2-423 is its lack of guidance. I was able to get things up and running without a problem, but I’m familiar with running things on a local network and I understand the basics of how to use the file system. For someone without that level of knowledge, it could be very easy to get lost while setting up any of TerraMaster’s services, especially because the documentation is so sparse.

This lack of information also extends into the apps on TerraMaster’s App Center. Each app is accompanied by a short descriptive paragraph and not much more than that. In the case of the recommended automated backup apps, the description text between the two of them is identical, which makes sense because they’re the same app, but that raises the question of why would you present the same app with two different names? It just adds a layer of confusion that does nothing to enhance the user experience.

There are a lot of cool tools available on the F2-423, but to really take advantage of them, you will have to have a bit of technical expertise. For example, you can set up your NAS as a web server and install Git and Node and Python, but TerraMaster will not hold your hand at any point after installation. Likewise, you can install a VPN app made by TerraMaster, but there’s no documentation on how to set it up or use it.

Should you buy it?

You should buy the TerraMaster F2-423 if:

• You want a ready-made, low-cost streaming server
• External hard drives no longer meet your data storage needs

You shouldn't buy the TerraMaster F2-423 if:

• You aren't comfortable with trying things out to see what they do
• You need more than 40TB of storage

Despite my reservations, I think the TerraMaster F2-423 is an awesome machine with incredible value. The Synology DS223 is comparable to the F2-423 in price ($250 vs $300) but has a slower processor, half the RAM, and just one 1Gbps Ethernet port. The next step up from Synology, the DS224+, costs $460 and still doesn’t quite match the TerraMaster’s hardware specs.

If you need a data storage solution that’s more robust than a flash drive or an external hard drive, the F2-423 can do it. If that’s all you need, there are cheaper options out there that don’t have the hardware the 423 has. If you’re looking for a home media streaming solution, you’ll have a hard time finding any pre-built NAS as capable as the 423 at the $300 price point. In other words, if your needs are simple and you are not intimidated by the lack of instructions, buying the TerraMaster F2-423 is an easy purchase to make.