Best £60-100 router

Mr_White

Mr_White

Mr_White

Soldato
Joined
14 Oct 2006
Posts
5,335
Location
Cambridge
Hello.

I'm looking for a solid 802.11n router to replace my aging DG834G v3.

But unfortunately I always find routers to be overlooked by most tech sites, and you can never really find any decent reviews, and I find that any reviews you do come across are just fluff (i.e. no benchmarking)

The main priority is throughput, as the DG834G doesn't really cope when streaming 1080p content, it just about manages on more sensible 720p stuff, but I would like to be able to wirelessly stream (to a wired client) most of my HD content, and I think a decent 802.11n router would be satisfactory.

I could use my DG834G as the modem for a standalone router, but I'd prefer not to, unless it's something exceptional.

Something that can cope with a high number of connections when torrenting, etc, would be nice as well, as my DG834G can get a bit overwhelmed in those situations.

I don't think anything with 9000 aerials or dual band is really necessary, as my DG834G delivers enough range, and 2.4ghz isn't that congested here. (A couple of routers with 2% signal or however you want to put it), but these features may be par for the course anyway.

From my findings, the Linksys E3000 seems to trump all the competition by a huge margin in this bracket, but if there are any hidden gems, I'm sure you guys will suggest them, so I thought I'd make a thread just to see ;)

Cheers.
 
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I am in the same boat as you. The Linksys E3000 is very good from the reviews I read, however I am getting the newer model out this year, the E4200. If you can stretch your budget, you might wanna take a look at it. Reviews are very good.
 
Well after spending all morning trawling for figures, it seems that Modem/Router combos are all a bit crap (This is probably why I've never noticed any that stood out over the years :p), even at the £100-150 level, most falling considerably short of the throughput of the E3000, more than 50% slower sometimes, and that's on the same band and standard :/

So I will probably go the standalone route.

I also noticed the E4200, but from comparing figures, I'm not sure if I'll get £50 worth of extra performance from it, but no doubt £50 of future proofing, and it looks much nicer (it'll be on show), so it's an option, but I would like to put that £50 towards replacing a couple of wireless cards to make all the systems 802.11n compatible.

The Netgear WNDR3700 seems to be the only competitor to the Linksys, and this also falls short.

So it is looking as if the E3000/4200 are the favourites, since they both manage to recreate their high throughput consistently across multiple benchmarks and reviews, and are the only two to deliver the throughput I will probably need to stream a multitude of HD sources.
 
Yes I took a look at the WNDR3700 as well, however it has a lot of flaws from what I read. The Linksys, I have heard nothing bad about either the E3000 or the E4200.
 
If you're only problem is HD streaming are we talking BR disc or "downloaded" content. If its downloaded content, 15Mbps throughput should be sufficent for a 12GB source file. For BR disc itself you're looking at best part of 50Mbps. Rather than replacing your router have you considered homeplugs? You could save some cash and expand your network rather than completely replace it.
 
I bought a tp-link TD-W8960N since it had some positive reviews on the bethere forums, even though it was only £35 ive found the wireless on it to be pretty good so far.
 
I think I will probably go for the E4200, As I've spent about 4 hours gathering numerous reviews on several routers I'm interested in, averaging up data, etc.

And they all have their little niggles and pitfalls that detract from their good points, the E4200 is the only router where this isn't the case, at least for my network, so I think it'll be worth paying the bit extra.
 
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