One of the nice things about the latest generation of the 802.11 wireless specification (802.11n) is that there is a lot of headroom available in it before there is a need to move to a new generation. When 802.11n first hit the market it was limited to around 150Mbps. This was due to quite a few factors, most notable of these was the use of spatial streams (breaking the signal into separate streams and reassembling them in proper order at the far end. Once this was combined with MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) things really took off. Now we are hitting the upper edge of the 802.11n spectrum with the 450Mbps routers and adapters. This new line is getting up there and finally pushing the upper limits of what you can do with this latest revision of the 802.11 protocol. We have another one of TRENDNet’s 450Mbps wireless routers in the lab. This time it is the TEW-692GR a 450Mbps concurrent dual band gaming router with a price tag of around $135. So follow along as we find out if this is really worth your time and money.
Value -Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item. As we mentioned above the TEW-692GR runs for around $135.00 from most e-tailers. This is a very good price considering what you are getting. You are getting two wireless routers for the price of one. I am not talking about a device that is capable of multiple SSIDs (although it is that too), but one that has two separate radios on different frequencies that do not overlap and are each capable of getting 450Mbps of throughput that on top of the other features (the gaming profiles for QoS etc.) really add up and make this price more than acceptable. Conclusion -The world of networking can get pretty boring. There is not much new to talk about when you get down to it. However, the TRENDNet TEW-692GR brings some excitement back to this rather dull area of the computer market. I really cannot stress enough how impressive it is to run multiple data streams like that and not see one or the other suffer. It did not matter what the traffic was either. The use of both radios concurrently enabled a much cleaner (and faster) wireless network. The price on the TEW-692GR is great considering the feature set (which includes more features than the average user will ever need). If you are looking to break into the 450Mbps wireless game, then here is your ticket.Discuss this in our Forum
