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Western Digital My Net AC1300 review: A fast 802.11ac router from a surprising source |
January 09, 2013
Western Digital entered the networking market in 2012 with an 802.11n router. The company has now delivered not only its first 802.11ac Draft 2.0 router—the My Net AC1300—but also its first 802.11ac bridge, the My Net AC Bridge (which we'll review separately). So what does a company that builds storage devices know about designing wireless networking hardware? Enough to deliver a light spanking to the best Wi-Fi router we’ve tested, the Asus RT-AC66U—at least on the 5GHz band.
The My Net AC1300 delivered great performance as an 802.11ac router, besting the Asus RT-AC66U and the Linksys EA6500 in two of three test locations.
But merely outperforming the RT-AC66U on a couple of benchmarks isn’t enough to knock Asus’s router out of our best-of-the-best ranking: Western Digital’s router is speedy enough on the 5GHz frequency band, but it offers fewer features and services than the Asus product does. It also delivered considerably lower 802.11n performance on the 2.4GHz band.
Western Digital's router was much less impressive operating as an 802.11n router on the 2.4GHz band.
We suspect that the AC1300’s mediocre 802.11n performance is due to WD’s decision to use internal antennas in a horizontally oriented enclosure (it has no provisions for wall mounting). Asus remains one of the few router manufacturers to employ external dipole antennas that the user can position for maximum range and performance, and its router can stay horizontal on a stand or hang vertically on a wall. On the other hand, WD’s router doesn’t call much attention to itself, while Asus’s screams “I’m a router!” We think performance trumps decor, but you might feel differently.
The AC1300 is easy to set up and doesn’t require an installation disc; you simply log in to the router to see a graphical user interface with seven large icons arranged across the top. The interface doesn’t look as slick as the one that Cisco provides with its EA6500 802.11ac router, but it is intuitive enough to figure out without your needing to resort to a user manual.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2023635/western-digital-my-net-ac1300-review-a-fast-802-11ac-router-from-a-surprising-source.html
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