WRT350N - Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link product reviews

Having used a Wired/Wireless 802.11G router for many years I decided to give the new Wireless 802.11N a go. Now I know that it is still a draft standard, but with it due to be ratified later this year I felt that it was time to jump on the 'N' bandwagon.

First thing I noticed getting it out the box was the stylish look and the separate stand that allows you to lay it flat or stand it upright.

All the connector ports are well labelled and the setting up of the device is even easier. I opted to use the Web based setup process and found this to be very simple and straight forward, in fact I had it fully up and running within 5 minutes.

The other major feature of this unit is the ability to plug in a USB Flash drive or an external HDD like the Maxtor One Touch Plus which you can then setup (very easily setup too ) to be used as either a NAS box type unit or as a source for streaming media, either way it works superbly. This coupled with the 1 Gigabit wired connection means I can transfer my data and video files to and from the USB HDD with ease. As a test I transferred a 270MB file from my desktop to the USB HDD, the transfer took a mere 46.22s which calculates out to a speed of 46.72Megabits/second. Now while that is a far cry from the 1 Gigabit possible speed, allowing for the max speed of the USB 2.0 connection and the speed of the HDD, that's a pretty good speed.

I next tried the wireless part of the unit. First off I tested it with a standard 802.11G 54Mbps wireless connection (my trusty laptop) this time it was a 349MB file which took 2m34.78s which works out to about 18 Megabits/second, not great but about what I expected for a 54 Mbps connection. Lastly I tested it with the Linksys WMP300N - Wireless-N PCI Adapter this took 1m58.13s which works out to 23.6 Megabits/second, quite a respectable time indeed.

Overall this is a great unit and is well worth the cost of it.