The launch of the 450Mbps segment of the 802.11n specification was sort of backwards. We saw some of the first routers last year in the September – October time frame. Then at CES we got our first glimpse of one of the new 450Mbps wireless adapters. This was the TRENDNet TEW-687GA that we just finished testing. But we are not going to stop there as we have another 450Mbps adapter from TRENDNet in the lab. This one is more PC specific and connects over USB 2.0. You lose the universal appeal that the 687GA had but gain more on portability. So let’s introduce the TRENDNet TEW-684UB 450Mbps Dual Band USB wireless adapter.
Performance - We have said it before and we will say it again; you cannot count performance by numbers alone. We will always give you both the raw numbers as well as the other items that make up for how well (or not so well) a product works. These are items like how quickly a USB adapter can initialize once it is plugged in. How quickly does it connect? We took a look at all of these for the TEW-687GA and now we will cover them for the TEW-684UB. For testing we used both a TEW-691GR 450Mbps wireless router (Single Band) and a TEW-673GRU Dual Band (Concurrent) 300Mbps router. We connected to these at 10-feet, 45-feet, and 50-feet. The 10 and 45 foot tests were inside the house proper and the 50 foot test was outside through the Cinder Block walls. We ran our tests in three different modes 300Mbps @ 2.4Ghz, 300Mbps @ 5GHz, and 450Mbps @ 2.4GHz. At the time of this writing we did not have a dual band 450Mbps router so we could not test at this speed and band.Reception - With the three tiny antenna points inside the plastic shell we were concerned with the range a reception of the 684UB. It is not secret that the speed of any wireless device depends on the reception. You could have the fastest adapter on the planet but it will count for nothing if the reception is poor. With the 684UB running on the 2.4GHz band we found that as long as we had no more than one internal wall between us and the TEW-691GR we were able to maintain good reception out to about 35 feet. After that and with more than one wall, or with a single wet wall (a wall with plumbing inside it) the reception dropped off quickly. The 5GHz band had a little better range (about 10 feet) before we started to see the reception and link speed drop off.
Inside the 10 foot range the 684UB is just plain fast! We were over 60MBps for each of our three successive test runs for the 450Mbps connection and still quite fast even out to 50-feet. The issue becomes one of range at that point. The three tiny little antenna do a good job, but just not as good as they might with a little more help.
Link Speed -I used to use this as a measure of how fast your connection is. However, it seems that many companies have caught on to the fact that if they advertise a 450Mbps device it had better show as one. The TEW-684UB shows up as a 450Mbps device when connected to our TEW-691GR. Remember this is typically the full duplex speed and not the half duplex speed of the device. Oddly enough our test results would seem to indicate that we are getting higher than 450Mbps (1MB=8Mb so at 64MBps we are at 512Mbps). So again the listed link speed does not seem to a real indication of speed.
Real World Traffic - When we were within about 20 feet of the TEW-691GR the network was very fast and at times I began to feel like I was connected to the LAN and not over the wireless network. I was able to move files around with ease. I transferred quite a few archived reviews and images (about 15GB) from my EEE Slate back to my networked storage in about 5 minutes. Watching Netflix while doing this present no issues either (except for the limited screen space). On the 300Mbps 2.4GHz network things we pretty quick, but seemed to change speeds quickly. This is more than likely due to all of the interference I get from the multiple access points near me. The 5GHz band was more consistent even if it was a little slower.
