Product Reviews

In October 2004 we reviewed Buffalo Technology's WBR2-G54, a wireless router that claimed to make securing your wireless network as easy as pushing a button. Now Buffalo has launched the WBR2-G54S, a largely identical product that claims to provide wireless transfer speeds of up to 125Mbit/s.

We tested the WBR2-G54S together with Buffalo's 125Mbit/s Cardbus wireless network adaptor, the WLI-CB-G54S. We were pleased to find that setting up a secure wireless connection was just as easy as before. We pushed a button on the router, clicked an onscreen button on our notebook and after a minute or so our network was ready.

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If you want to connect only two Buffalo wireless devices this system is ideal, although anyone with a larger network or equipment from other brands will need to use the router's manual setup. Fortunately this is relatively easy, thanks to a decent web-based interface which offers plenty of help should you need it.

We were far less impressed, however, with the speed at which the equipment could transfer data. We tested the connection by transferring a large file via FTP from one computer to another over the 125Mbit/s wireless link. Most similar products have produced speeds of around 30Mbit/s in this test, but the Buffalo equipment limped to an average speed of just 9.77Mbit/s. This is only marginally faster than the scores of 6.5-9.5Mbit/s we expect from equipment rated at 54Mbit/s. Confusingly, disabling the router's high-speed mode improved our results marginally, increasing its speed to 10.54Mbit/s.

With results like these it's hard to recommend the WBR2-G54S. Its simple security system makes it ideal for anyone who's new to wireless networking, but that can also be said of the older, cheaper, WBR2-G54, which is a better buy. For high-speed that works, try Netgear's WGT624.