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Where is the best way to get full balanced reviews of Routers?

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Juggernaut

Occasional Visitor
Hi,

I think I made a mistake to base my Router purchase on CNET.com, which basically seems to rate on the ideal feature set, rather than how well they actually work/don't work in the real world.
Conversely, I can look at amazon.com's 1 and 2 star review and scare myself out of buying any router at all due to the abundance of problems they all seem to have.

Is there a place to get honest and accurate reviews of different routers, so I can know which ones have the cool features, but also which ones have connectivity problems etc?....

Thanks!
Juggernaut
 
Its hard to get a long term usage scenario from a review, but SmallNetBuilder itself does a pretty good job of reviews and usually pretty in depth. Its best not to buy routers right at launch, maybe wait three to six months or even a year from the release date so that most issues present at launch are cleared up in newer firmware updates. This pretty much applies to all brands. Then again some are pretty solid upon launch but why take that risk?
 
Reviews, both from places like CNET and the 5 to 1000 word user reviews, make for interesting reading, but nothing to base a buying decision on.

Tim's reviews are noteworthy because they show the relative strengths between routers of similar generations (at least when the actual review process hasn't changed). But what isn't shown is the progress a router may or may not make after growing up a little with a few firmware under it's belt.

The best way to get this kind of info by trial and error through actual experience. Or, second best, from other folks in forums like this where you can ask detailed questions and get back detailed answers to the aspects that matter the most to you.

Over the years, I have had and used routers from Linksys, Dlink, Netgear and a few others too obscure to remember right now.

But the only one I use, recommend and am the most satisfied with is Asus (starting with the RT-N56U, RT-N66U, RT-AC56U and RT-N68U) and of course, RMerlin firmware (or the john9527 or hggomes forks thereof).

Besides the third party support for these routers, what keeps me happy is the continued and long (vs. other brands) support of older routers, including patching security holes but also offering new features as possible too. While this seems like a bonus and not a requirement, what this ensures is that Asus is offering current versions of the individual packages inside each firmware. That is where the security comes from.

Not all manufacturers are as concerned in these areas (TP-Link is especially avoided because of this aspect. Some of the packages are a decade or more old!). Netgear offers firmware for the first few months of a router being introduced, but afterwards seems to shun them in favor of their latest models. Dlink? No, no, NO. Linksys? These models offer nothing like the features, the hardware and the synergistic capabilities of their Asus counterparts.

The pro or semi pro products are great if you don't value your time. And you want to gamble with your security (do you trust your cli configuration skills). The bottom line is that unless you have a real pro you can trust to set them up and manage them as needed, they are a weight around your neck. That is even disregarding the monthly/yearly fees to have the equipment you 'bought' be useable for the purpose you bought it for.

If money (and time) is no object, Asus' products look like toys.

But if you want something reliable, dependable and with usable features along with as current security as possible for a relatively small one time cost for the gatekeeper to your personal network, an Asus router is about as close to perfect as can be expected.

Which router did you regret buying? I've never regretted buying (and keeping) any router at the time of purchase, but in hindsight, I should have switched to Asus' products much sooner.
 
SNB is a good place to get reviews of things, generally people can have conflicting reviews but RMerlin's contribution is one of the main attractions of this forums.

Quite often when someone buys a new wifi router it is to upgrade wifi and speeds. You can buy a new router with the firmware not very good which i did in my experience but i didnt have any issues because i only use consumer wifi routers as APs. When they are tasked with internet connectivity i usually find that consumer routers arent up to the job regardless if new or old.

The problem in some countries is that technology is way overpriced that buying a recently released tech is just not feasible from the extra costs involved that building your own solution ends up being a lot cheaper and better.

The other problem that adds to the confusion is that manufacturers advertise their consumer routers with lots of hype such as considering a companion cpu or controller as a legitimate core and tend to list the hardware accelerated speeds instead saying you can use it for gigabit WAN, but try use a consumer router for gigabit WAN with PPPOE (which is still quite widespread) and you dont get gigabit speeds. All this hype adds to the confusion and at SNB we show you the truth about whats inside a consumer router and what they really are.
 
Is there a place to get honest and accurate reviews of different routers, so I can know which ones have the cool features, but also which ones have connectivity problems etc?....
as both a beta tester and reviewer of modems and routers i can assure you that most reviews you read on the net are based on the publicity mail out that the manufactures provide along with the loaned devices and most are little more that whats in the box reviews and can be quite biased because of the sponsorship / paid advertising they get

sites like SNB and trusted reviews at least provide actual data that you can compare with but in the end the reviews are opinion based

i will say though that all of us have to test these devices usually with the initial release fw which can and does come with issues and the devices are tested and reviewed on this relation

its almost impossible to say how devices will work under different environments esp wifi , and if buying off the plan so to speak will and can be problematic , if you want a device thats perfect avoid anything newer that 6 months or so old and check forums like this for complaints and comments on the devices you are interested in

in the end its up to you to make an informed decision based on the information you gather from multiple sources
 
Where is the best way to get full balanced reviews of Routers?
Answer: on Google! :rolleyes:

Google multiple test sites for the device and google multiple forums for user opinions! :cool:

At the end make up your mind based on your needs (and not theoretical tests and biased users)! :eek:
 
Answer: on Google! :rolleyes:

Google multiple test sites for the device and google multiple forums for user opinions! :cool:

At the end make up your mind based on your needs (and not theoretical tests and biased users)! :eek:

Good post. Use as many sources as practically possible.

I like amazon reviews, but they are occasionally infiltrated by shill reviews, like an author giving a book away to anyone who leaves a 5-star review, but thankfully some of the reviews often note such an abuse.

Otherwise, forums are a favorite of mine, but they can be time-consuming. The "official" review sitescare good for certain things, but the crowd-sourced error-checking potential of hundreds/thousands of forumites is nearly impossible to match.
 
As a novice all I can say is it's darn near impossible to wade through all the data much less understand half of it. I can say SNB was a great help and, thanks to SNB, I learned asking the guys at the big box stores was pretty much pointless. The misinformation they rattled off set off my newly acquired BS detectors.

As a novice I wasn't after the best but I did want to steer clear of the worst. Because of ongoing problems with our ISP I wanted traffic monitoring, QoS, mutliple SSIDs and a user interface I could stumble through. Did I find the perfect fit? Probably not but I did find "good enough". Good enough to find and fix a couple idiosyncrasies on our net and good enough to convince our ISP that they did indeed have a problem.

Now I have no knowledge nor any opinion of TRENDnet and their products but I did want to say I love their website. They have a click-able emulator of their router GUI and all its features. Sure wish I would have stumbled into a few of those when I was looking for my new router!
 
As a novice all I can say is it's darn near impossible to wade through all the data much less understand half of it. I can say SNB was a great help and, thanks to SNB, I learned asking the guys at the big box stores was pretty much pointless. The misinformation they rattled off set off my newly acquired BS detectors.

As a novice I wasn't after the best but I did want to steer clear of the worst. Because of ongoing problems with our ISP I wanted traffic monitoring, QoS, mutliple SSIDs and a user interface I could stumble through. Did I find the perfect fit? Probably not but I did find "good enough". Good enough to find and fix a couple idiosyncrasies on our net and good enough to convince our ISP that they did indeed have a problem.

Now I have no knowledge nor any opinion of TRENDnet and their products but I did want to say I love their website. They have a click-able emulator of their router GUI and all its features. Sure wish I would have stumbled into a few of those when I was looking for my new router!

Never used TRENDnet so I can't comment on them but I have used Asus, Linksys, D-Link and Netgear.. Never had issues with any of the routers that I owned from any of those brands, however I'm sure each company does on occasion produce bad devices.... Check out each companies router UI and feature set/options offered within the UI and see which you like the best in addition to reviews for the best experience and sometimes it may just come down to aesthetics lol.
 
I've had really good luck with TRENDnet switches and wireless adapters, FWIW...
 
Walmart has an interesting special running on the Asus RT-N66U; for an extra two bucks you can get a ten pound kettle plate for your barbell. (What in the Blue Suzy? I really don't know what to say ... possible setback for medical marijuana in California?)
 
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Tim's reviews are noteworthy because they show the relative strengths between routers of similar generations (at least when the actual review process hasn't changed). But what isn't shown is the progress a router may or may not make after growing up a little with a few firmware under it's belt.

Completely agree - I think Tim's review process is consistent across different vendors, and he's pretty even handed - and not concerned with calling BS against marketing appeal...

Not everyone will see the same numbers he reports (some better, some worse), but I've found his relative results across different vendors to be fairly reliable - e.g. Model X from Vendor A vs Model Y from Vendor B - in most environments, the relative comparisons have held true in my experience...
 
My question to OP is how he purchases new car? Based on reviews or test drive or spec. sheets? Ultimately decision is up to the purchasern when buying anything. Every one has different needs and purpose.
One size does not fit all. Speaking of a router my family is served well
running Linksys EA8500. Since I put it to use, never needed a reboot
or crashed on us.
 
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My question to OP is how he purchases new car? Based on reviews or test drive or spec. sheets? Ultimately decision is up to the purchaser
when buying anything. Every one has different needs and purpose.
One size does not fit all. Speaking of a router my family is served well
running Linksys EA8500. Since I put it to use, never needed a reboot
or crashed on us.

Agreed. Anyone that asks for the "best" of anything is asking the wrong question. That question is really saying "decide for me", which implies that they cannot think for themselves.

Some research must be done. If you are unaware of your needs and have no time to discover said needs, hire a professional.
 

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