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TP-Link TL-WR1043ND review

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Verdict

Cheap and stacked with plenty of features, but its range is poor

Review Date: 23 Mar 2010

Reviewed By: Jonathan Bray

Price when reviewed: £34 (£40 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
3 stars out of 6

Value for Money
5 stars out of 6

Performance
2 stars out of 6

You might expect a low cost router to sacrifice features to hit its budget. But there's little on the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND's specifications sheet to give this cable router's low-cost origins away.

Sure, it isn't a dual-band model, but for your £34 you get a surprisingly full set of features. There's a full-fat 2.4GHz 802.11n connection with support for wireless networking at theoretical throughput speeds of up to 300Mbits/sec. There are three large, detachable aerials at the rear, to give it the best chance at receiving and sending signals at long range.

On the router's rear panel, alongside the antennae and the device's single WAN port, are four Gigabit Ethernet ports (a very surprising inclusion at this price), and a USB socket for sharing storage devices over your network.

Meanwhile, in the device's web-based administration pages, a parental controls section lets you restrict access by MAC address to trusted URLs, and a bandwidth control section lets you restrict upload and download speeds of specified IP and port ranges.

Critically, however, wireless performance wasn't good enough. At close range, speeds were on a par with most of the other single-band 2.4GHz routers we've seen recently. We measured 79Mbits/sec from the router to laptop and 64Mbits/sec the other way. (Our test laptop uses the excellent Intel Wi-Fi Link 5300 chipset to ensure the highest possible throughput.)

Move further away, however, and performance dips dramatically. In our long-range tests, the TL-WR1043ND managed a router to laptop rate of 26Mbits/sec and 37Mbits/sec in reverse. This wasn't good enough for our laptop to maintain a solid frame rate in our HD movie-streaming test at distance. It's one of the slowest 802.11n 2.4GHz routers we've come across in this respect.

Despite the low price, then, the poor range kills its appeal. If you're after a cable router on a budget, we'd advise you spend a few pounds more and buy the [h href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/wifi-routers/356095/buffalo-wzr-hp-g300nh"]Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH[/a] instead.

Author: Jonathan Bray

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Comments

User comments

With this low price you can even play around with DD-WRT with this router I think it worth a try.

By Kenttti on 3 Apr 2010

Not fast?

At close range, 3 meter, the results I get with my Intel WiFi Link 5300 are alot better.
http://img38.imageshack.us/i/tlwr1043nd23meter.png
/
http://img411.imageshack.us/i/tlwr1043nd23meter2.p
ng/
http://img176.imageshack.us/i/tlwr1043nd23meter3.p
ng/
http://img683.imageshack.us/i/test3accesspoint1m.p
ng/
http://img339.imageshack.us/i/test1accesspoint1m.p
ng/
http://img704.imageshack.us/i/transfer1mtrhomegrou
pdo.jpg/
To get similar results you are having, I have to move 10 meters from the router in another room with 2 walls in between?
http://img215.imageshack.us/i/tlwr1043nd810meter2m
ure.png/

By Nivekius on 6 Apr 2010

Not fast?

By Nivekius on 6 Apr 2010

Oops

Well something went wrong there, here are the correct links, 3 meter:
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5769/tlwr1043nd23
meter.png
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3392/tlwr1043nd
23meter2.png
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/8140/tlwr1043nd
23meter3.png
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/7733/transfer1m
trhomegroupdo.jpg
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/7098/test3acces
spoint1m.png
And 10 meter 2 walls:
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/3632/tlwr1043nd
810meter2mure.png

By Nivekius on 6 Apr 2010