Product Reviews

Trendnet has clearly learned from its past brash designs. The company's latest Draft-N router is a much more stylish affair than previous models. The three antennas on the side are fixed to the router, so you can't replace them with high-gain versions as you can with routers that use the standard reverse SMA connections.

The TEW-633GR is squarely aimed at gamers, and has the StreamEngine QoS as used by D-Link's DIR-655 and other Trendnet routers. This means you don't have to change complex settings to prioritise gaming traffic over non-time-critical data such as downloads or simple web browsing.

The router is incredibly simple to set up thanks to the installation wizard, which explains how to connect the router in layman's terms and then gives you simple options for naming your network and choosing security settings (WEP, WPA and WPA2). The whole process takes around 10 minutes, and there's a printed manual in case you get stuck.

We tested

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the router with our Centrino laptop's built-in wireless adaptor first, and got some reasonable results: 18.92Mbit/s at 1m and 16.5Mbit/s at 10m. The throughput of 8.38Mbit/s at 25m was impressive, though and, along with D-Link's 1353 (opposite), it's one of the fastest transfer rates we've seen at this range over 802.11g.

When we switched to Trendnet's own TEW-612PC CardBus adaptor (£70) we expected fast throughputs. However, we were a little disappointed by the 9.21Mbit/s at 25m, which was only a marginal improvement. There was also a slight boost at 1m, but throughput was slower at 10m. With such a small difference between our Centrino notebook and Trendnet's own CardBus adaptor, it's impossible to recommend spending £70 on each computer that needs to connect wirelessly.

We couldn't find many reasons to justify the steep £117 price, either. There's a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, which is useful for speeding up file transfers if your PCs, notebooks and any network storage devices have matching adaptors. There's no built-in ADSL modem, though, so you'll need to provide your own Ethernet modem if you have an ADSL broadband connection.

The other problem is that the TEW-633GR is outperformed by Belkin's similar N1 Vision (What's New, Shopper 239), which costs £16 less. The Vision also has the benefit of its handy display. However, if you don't need Gigabit Ethernet but you do need an ADSL modem then Linksys's WAG325N is a terrific Draft-N router and it costs only £80 including VAT.