Belkin N1 Wireless Notebook Card review

Verdict:

Review Date: 18 Apr 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 1 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Belkin's N1 router is full of clear instructions and diagrams, which refer to the router's various parts with numbers that correspond to numbers stuck to the router's ports, power supply and so on.

The setup CD guides you through naming your wireless network and connecting to your ADSL internet connection. It doesn't help you with wireless security, so you have to set up your wireless encryption through the web-based interface. The router's various options are split into clear categories, and most have comprehensive help text.

When connected to a Centrino notebook, the N1 performed well in our tests. Its 1m and 15m speed results of 20.97Mbit/s and 19.83Mbit/s were in the top half of the group, but 5.75Mbit/s was only average for the long-range 25m test. Belkin's matching N1 PC Card and USB adaptors have a claimed throughput of 270Mbit/s when used with the N1 router. The setup programs for both adaptors were easy to use, and helped us find and connect to the wireless network. The wizards don't tell you to reboot, though, and we found that the adaptor wouldn't connect unless we did.

Trying to get the N1 router to work with the N1 adaptors was tricky. The CardBus card would connect, but kept dropping its connection before we could complete our tests. We tried every combination of wireless channel and data rate to no avail. The USB adaptor held a stable connection, but would run only at less than 1Mbit/s.

Belkin's N1 router is easy to set up and works well with Centrino notebooks, but the problems we had with its own Draft-N adaptors make it impossible to recommend.

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