Introduction

It's time to take a look at the big brother of the F4-424—the F4-424 Max—which kicks things up several notches in terms of hardware features. Not only are we looking at a much more powerful CPU—the Intel Core i5-1235U instead of the Intel N95—but the Max version also gets upgraded with a pair of 10 Gbps Ethernet ports. In addition, the Max version has a pair of PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe slots for M.2 SSDs, whereas the plain F4-424 offers unspecified lane width PCIe 3.0 slots. The rest of the hardware remains mostly the same, although the more powerful processor is a fair bit more power hungry, especially under load, but more on that later in the review.

On the software side of things, we're looking at TOS 6, which is a rather big upgrade over TOS 5, as we covered in the TerraMaster F8 Plus review. That said, the regular F4-424 has also received the OS upgrade alongside TerraMaster's other recent models—so it's by no means unique to the more expensive models, but TOS 6 makes for an overall better impression of the product. We did bump into a minor issues with the F4-424 Max that the F8 Plus didn't seem to have issues with, but more on that in the review.

Specifications

Packaging and Bundle

Unlike the F4-424, the F4-424 Max ships in a shiny retail box, rather than the more utilitarian brown box TerraMaster used for its cheaper model. That said, the box doesn't serve any other function than protecting the product before it reaches you, so hopefully not too much of the higher price point has gone towards nicer packaging.


The accessory bundle remains largely the same, with a power adapter, a network cable, screws, some stickers, as well as some basic documentation.

The Exterior

The TerraMaster F4-424 Max looks identical to most of TerraMaster's recent 4-bay products at first look, as they're based around the same standardized housing. This means that you have four 3.5-inch drive bays around the front, with nothing much on the sides or bottom, all the interesting bits being around the back.


The drive trays are also identical, with the same tool-less design and lack of drive numbering as the previous products we've looked at.


Around the back, things differ a bit from the F4-424, but if we start from the top, the F4-424 Max keeps the power button and the HDMI port in the same location, but the two 10 Gbps ports sit higher up than the two 2.5 Gbps ports of the F4-424. The Max also gets a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-A ports, as well as a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C port. TerraMaster stuck with a standard 12 V power jack, but the supplied power brick is now a 120 watt unit, rather than the 90 watt one that came with the F4-424. We don't really see a situation where the F4-424 Max will ever get close to utilizing the full 120 watts, but it's good to have some excess capacity, so the unit doesn't run at or close to the limit, increasing lifespan.