Netgear WNDR3700 review

There's nothing shy about Netgear's range-topping WNDR3700. Although it has no protruding aerials, it measures more than 200mm tall and 150mm wide; fortunately, its glossy finish and LEDs aren't as intrusive.

There's nothing low key about its specifications either This cable router boasts twin radios and simultaneous 2.4GHz/5GHz coverage, a total of eight internal aerials and maximum rated throughput of 300Mbits/sec in each band.

Our tests reflected these blazing specifications, with the router achieving average router to laptop transfer speeds at close range of 133Mbits/sec and 80Mbits/sec in reverse. We use a laptop equipped with an Intel WiFi Link 5300 chipset for our tests.

Speed over 2.4GHz wasn't as good, but the speeds it achieved were about average, and were enough to stream a Full HD movie clips smoothly.

Range-wise, results were more mixed. In our long-range test, the Netgear fared well over 2.4GHz, again achieving average speeds - 58Mbits/sec router to laptop and 48Mbits/sec the other way. But, over 5GHz speeds tailed off dramatically.

Rates from router to laptop of 12Mbits/sec and 15Mbits/sec in the other direction place it a long way behind most of the other dual-band routers we've seen. Full HD movie streaming at these speeds proved impossible.

The feature set is better, with the facility to set up guest networks on each band, a USB port for file sharing and media streaming via UPnP, and easy to use administration pages. It will also check for firmware updates automatically whenever you log into its admin pages.

Overall, however, the WNDR3700 doesn't quite do enough to win our vote this month, the main reason being its middling range. That, combined with a slightly higher price than the Linksys by Cisco WRT610N, means it just misses out on an award.

Author: Jonathan Bray