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Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH review

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Verdict

There's no exotic dual band, but this router is cheap, and extremely fast

Review Date: 4 Mar 2010

Reviewed By: Jonathan Bray

Price when reviewed: £47 (£55 inc VAT)

Buy it now for: £65
(see more store prices)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
6 stars out of 6

Buffalo was among the first to produce dual-band 802.11n routers, but it hasn't refreshed its top-end models for some time, instead concentrating on single-band 2.4GHz models.

It seems an odd approach until you look at the performance results. The WZR-HP-G300NH - an unassuming 2.4GHz single-band cable router on paper - blows away much of its competition.

We test using a Lenovo ThinkPad W700, which has a top-end, 3x3 Intel WiFi Link 5300 adapter on board, to ensure maximum performance. At close range this is the fastest single-band 802.11n router we've tested, achieving a transmit rate (from the router to our test laptop) of 123Mbits/sec and a receive rate of 109Mbits/sec.

It also performs brilliantly over longer distances too, with speeds of 46Mbits/sec from router to laptop and 65Mbits/sec when sending files back the other way.

In fact, the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH comes close to the Belkin Double N+ for overall performance, a router that's twice as expensive, and it backs this up with a fantastic array of features.

Four Gigabit Ethernet ports ensure quick wired speeds and eliminate performance bottlenecks. A USB port allows the use of external hard disks and flash drives as network attached storage, with not only media server but also BitTorrent facilities built in. Meanwhile, for business users, there's integrated hardware support for PPTP VPNs.

There are a couple of weak areas. The administrative pages are messy, and if you live in an area with much 2.4GHz interference, you'll miss the flexibility of a 5GHz option.

But for £47 who's complaining? Even non-cable users needn't miss out. Couple it with a DrayTek Vigor 120 Ethernet Modem for use on a BT ADSL setup, and you'll still have change from £100. It's an excellent buy.

Author: Jonathan Bray

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Comments

User comments

Does this unit have a built in ADSL modem?

By redgar3 on 5 Mar 2010

@redgar3

No, as it's a cable modem, but if you read the last paragraph of the review, it suggests a solution if you want to use it with a BT ADSL setup.

By pbryanw on 5 Mar 2010

Animal

I like its cute ears...is this a design in honour of the Great K-9?

Needs eyes...

By Gindylow on 7 Mar 2010

benchmark app?

is there a standard tool used for benchmarking throughput, or is it as simple as timing transfers with fixed file sizes?

By jeeves on 7 Mar 2010

Still Best Value

Can't find this router anywhere for the £47 + VAT as mentioned in article, best price now arounf £66 + VAT
Would it still win the award at this price?
Why has the ebuyer proce gone up almost £30

By rsnorris on 18 Apr 2010

KEEP AWAY FROM THIS ROUTER

Purchased this router almost 3 months ago, if you look on the web you will find people having major issues with it, it crashes all the time, reboots when it feels like. Just Google "wzr-hp-g300nh reboot" and all will be revealed.
PC Pro, as ever dont really put equipment through a rigourous test, A List aswell.....definately not

By m_nad on 31 Oct 2010

In addition to the WiFi performance testing, does PC Pro have any plans to test WANLAN performance?

I've just had FTTC installed and I've started to test some routers (mainly what I can find in the cupboard at work!).

As an example, a brand-new Zyxel NBG-460N returns a Speedtest.net result ~50% slower than my laptop does when plugged straight into the VDSL modem.

Fair enough my laptop isn't doing NAT/SPI/UTM/VPN etc but that's quite a difference.

By Chris_B on 10 Nov 2010

Buyers beware

I bought this product on the strength of this review so I think it fair to point these faults out to other potential purchasers.
This router although very appealing on paper has issues which make it very frustrating to use. Firstly I discovered that there is a fault with DHCP renewals which has been acknowledged by Buffalo technical. This will affect cable modem users and means that the router will not always obtain a WAN ip address without resetting both modem and WZR-HP-G300NH, which may take several attempts. The second problem is with the NAS functionality. It's not only slow but if you try and transfer large files it can totally hang the web interface and prevent any connections to the shared folders. The router does not loose any of its settings during this process and still functions as a wireless router.The only solution is a reset which if you are unlucky, also means that DHCP does not refresh. Several resets of the cable modem / router may also be required to get things working again. In conclusion this router is buggy no matter which firmware you choose to use. As Buffalo cannot advise of when new firmware is going to be released to fix the problems, I am left thinking that purchasing a more reliable product is the only option.

By spliff on 20 Nov 2010

the reason of slow NAS performance..

.. is probably the SATA driver, the penguin (in DD-WRT based firmware) is padding inside this box. Seen it before on some WD NAS's running on linux.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I'd like to use this thing for wireless NAS.

By rando_mname on 5 Jan 2011

No PPPoA support no BT ADSL!

Both DD-WRT and the userfriendly firmware only support PPPoE. I have a Draytec 120 and whilst it connects to BT by itself it will not connect via the Airstation as no PPPoA support.

By dutch2 on 30 Oct 2011

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