TRENDnet Brings The Speed: First 450Mbps Router
Routers are getting better and better- home networking is easier than ever, and almost anyone can get a fast, simple wireless system setup without too much hassle. We recently reviewed a router that offered super-simple setup. We’ve seen powerline networking equipment. And now, we’ve gotten a new speed champion.
By themselves, the TRENDnet TEW-691GR Wireless N Gigabit Router and TEW-664UB are pretty good. But combined, they offer a speed boost over any other system we’ve tried, supporting 450 Mbps transfers from the router (but only 300 Mbps through the adapter). Now, as is typical, you probably won’t get those speeds in real-life, but we still found a real world advantage over other routers and it definitely helped with bandwidth-intensive applications like HD video and file transfers. You can certainly use either piece of gear by itself, but you might not notice a major advantage over other equipment- quite a few adapters don’t offer the same range and throughput, especially built-in models, and no other routers are as powerful.
Let’s take a closer look. First, there is the router, offering the typical four internal ethernet ports and one to connect to your DSL or cable modem. Somewhat less typical are the three external antennas, each one individually adjustable, allowing you to adjust the range a bit depending on the placement of the router. It offers WPS setup, and a decent energy saving technology called GREENnet that reduces power consumption. It isn’t the most attractive piece of equipment we’ve seen though- it’s black and a bit ominous-looking. It does, however, have the honor of being the first 450Mbps router on the market.
There’s also the 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N USB adapter, the other half of the high-speed wireless duo. Simply plug this into your laptop, netbook, or even a PC that doesn’t have access to a wired connection and it’ll be online in a minute. It works with Macs and PCs on nearly any operating system (even Linux, though we didn’t test it). We liked that it included a USB extender cable, but it is fairly large- about the size of a normal USB flash drive.
There are a couple of downsides to the package. The first is the relatively bland interface for the router (and the less-than-simple setup). Another is the cost- at $170, it’s one of the more expensive consumer routers we’ve seen, though it does offer some level of future proofing as it’s faster than the available adapters. The adapter is a bit more affordable at around $50, but might be less-than-cutting edge reasonably soon. Of course, the difficult question is whether to upgrade… and our answer is to consider waiting until the price drops a bit on the router or adapters have caught up. Either way, early adopters should be satisfied with TRENDnet’s super-powered router.
