TerraMaster vs Synology

TerraMaster has been making NAS boxes since 2010, longer than most people assume, and its current F-series hardware is a genuine bargain. Synology has spent two decades building the software, and it shows. Line the F4-424 up against the DS925+ at their real prices and TerraMaster gives you a newer CPU with an integrated GPU, faster DDR5 memory, two NVMe cache slots, and roughly $150 back in your pocket. Line the two operating systems up and Synology's DSM wins on maturity, apps, and support just as clearly.

The reason this is not a straight rerun of UGREEN NAS vs Synology is TerraMaster's software, and one specific part of it: security. TOS is functional and it has improved, but it is the least polished of the major NAS operating systems and it has a rougher track record on vulnerabilities. That pushes the smart move for a lot of buyers toward using TerraMaster's cheap hardware with an operating system you trust more, which is covered at the end. If you want the mature-appliance side of the argument in full, read QNAP vs Synology and Synology vs TrueNAS next to this.

The F4-424 runs an Intel N95, a quad-core Alder Lake-N chip that turbos to 3.4GHz, with 8GB of DDR5 you can take to 32GB, two M.2 NVMe slots, and dual 2.5GbE. The DS925+ runs an AMD Ryzen V1500B, a quad-core, eight-thread part with 4GB of ECC DDR4 to 32GB and dual 2.5GbE. For raw file serving and light apps the two CPUs are roughly a wash. TerraMaster's advantages are the DDR5, the pair of NVMe slots, and the price; Synology's advantage is the ECC memory, which protects data in transit through RAM and is a real plus for a storage box.

The integrated GPU is the part that changes what the box can actually do. The N95 has Intel UHD graphics with Quick Sync, so the F4-424 can hardware-transcode video for Plex or Jellyfin, reshaping a 4K stream for a weak client without pinning the CPU. Synology dropped Intel iGPUs from its Plus line, so the DS925+ does software transcoding only, which is slow and quickly gives up on demanding files. If a media server is anywhere in your plan, that gap decides it. It is the same transcoding question that settles Jellyfin vs Plex, except here it is baked into the silicon you buy.

Be honest about the ceiling, though. The N95 is an entry-level chip. It is great for a file server plus one or two transcoded streams and a handful of Docker containers, but it is not a heavy virtualization host, and 8GB in the box out of the gate is tight if you plan to pile on services. Buy a 16GB or 32GB SO-DIMM up front if you intend to run a real container stack. Plan the array itself in a RAID calculator so you size usable capacity before you fill the bays.

DSM is the best NAS operating system on the market, and the first-party apps are the reason to pay. Active Backup for Business backs up Windows machines, servers, and VMware or Hyper-V hosts for free with no per-agent license. Surveillance Station is a capable NVR with two free camera licenses. Synology Photos and Synology Drive cover the Google Photos and Dropbox replacement itch cleanly. Btrfs with scheduled snapshots and Snapshot Replication is built in and reliable. Twenty years of forum threads mean that when something breaks, the answer already exists somewhere.

TOS, TerraMaster's operating system, does the basics. Version 6 is rebuilt on a modern Linux 6.1 kernel (with TOS 7 now rolling out), and you get a file manager, a photo app, backup tools, an App Center, Docker, and snapshot support. What you do not get is DSM's depth, its app catalog, or anything close to Active Backup for Business or Surveillance Station. The community is a fraction of the size, so when you hit an edge case you are often the first person writing about it.

The part that deserves a blunt warning is security. TOS has a rougher history than DSM. TerraMaster's OS shipped an unauthenticated remote code execution flaw in 2022 that attackers actively exploited, and TerraMaster boxes left reachable from the open internet have been swept up in ransomware campaigns alongside other budget NAS brands. Synology has had vulnerabilities too, but its response discipline and update cadence are stronger. The practical rule with either box, and a non-negotiable one with TerraMaster: do not port-forward the web UI to the internet. Reach it from outside through a VPN instead, which is what WireGuard vs Tailscale is there to help you set up.

On Synology's 2025 Plus-series models, including the DS925+, creating a storage pool and getting full drive health monitoring, deduplication, and firmware updates now expects Synology-branded or explicitly certified drives. Put a plain WD Red or Seagate IronWolf in one of those bays and you get warnings and reduced functionality, where the same drive worked fine on a 2023 model. Synology-branded drives are rebadged and carry a premium, so this raises the true cost of a new Synology and takes away the freedom to buy whatever NAS drive is on sale that week.

That matters more than it first looks, because the drives are usually the bigger line item than the box. Filling four bays with 8TB or larger disks, a per-drive premium adds up fast, and it recurs every time you expand or replace a disk. TerraMaster puts no such restriction on you: buy whatever reputable SATA or NVMe drives you like and get full features. If you specifically want Synology's software but not the drive tax, the workaround is to buy a pre-2025 model like the DS923+, which still takes third-party drives freely. That is the same advice that comes up in QNAP vs Synology, and it holds here.

Because the F4-424 is a standard x86 machine, you are not stuck with TOS. You can boot from USB and install TrueNAS Scale, Unraid, or Proxmox, which turns the TerraMaster into a bare-metal host for a storage OS with a long track record and a big community. That is the cleanest answer to the TOS maturity and security concerns: you keep the cheap Intel hardware and the Quick Sync iGPU, and you run software that is documented, patched on a known cadence, and understood by thousands of other homelabbers. Synology gives you no equivalent option, since DSM is locked to Synology hardware.

This is the route I would point most tinkerers toward for a TerraMaster box, more strongly than I would for a UGREEN one, precisely because TOS is the weaker OS of the two newcomers. Pair the F4-424 with TrueNAS Scale for a ZFS-first build, or with Unraid if you want mixed drive sizes and simple app management. Read TrueNAS vs Unraid to pick between them and skim the best NAS operating systems roundup first. Two honest caveats: the N95 with 8GB is fine for TrueNAS file serving but modest for heavy ZFS plus many VMs, so budget for a RAM upgrade, and the F4-424 uses non-ECC memory, which ZFS purists prefer to avoid (it runs fine without it, but ECC is one thing the Synology has and this does not).