Conclusion
It’s nice to see that none of the routers in this test perform poorly, but a few of them don’t seem to take advantage of the extra data stream. We would still choose the 300n Netgear WNDR3800 over no less than nine of the fourteen 450N routers in this test.
The ASUS RT-N66U stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of speed, which is what this test is really about. We have never before seen average wireless speeds above 200Mbps. The RT-N66U also offers many features, although the IPv6-support is a bit dodgy. While that does not affect the score as yet, we will pay increasingly more attention to this in the future. The ASUS RT-N66U neverthelesss receives the Hardware.Info Gold Award without any reservations.
The Silver Award goes to the Netgear WNDR4500 and the Buffalo WZR-HP-450H. The WNDR4500 deserves it because it’s second best in terms of speed and features. The Buffalo router gets it thanks to its comprehensive features (including a pre-installed version of DD-WRT) and the excellent speed it achieves at long distances on its sole frequency.
The Bronze Award (which traditionally goes to the product with the best price/ performance ratio) goes to the Edimax BR-6675nD, the Netgear WNDR4000 and the TP-Link TL-WR2543ND.
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| ASUS RT-N66U | Netgear WNDR4500 Buffalo WZR-HP-450H |
Edimax BR-6675nD Netgear WNDR4000 TP-Link TL-WR2543ND |
