Netgear RangeMax Next Wireless Notebook Adapter review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 18 Apr 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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Review
Specs

Netgear's RangeMax Next ADSL Router is the best-looking ADSL router in the group, thanks to its white finish and lack of external aerials. It's also the cheapest Draft-N ADSL router in this month's Labs test.

The setup wizard on the CD helps you to install the router physically with a sequence of small diagrams. You then set it up with the web-based interface, which gives you the choice of using the wizard or setting it up manually. Unfortunately, if you later change your mind and want to use the manual setup, you have to restore the router to its factory defaults, which is annoyingly nannyish.

At first, the RangeMax Next was horribly slow with our test Centrino notebook, but once we changed the wireless channel from channel six to automatic mode it was very fast at 1m and 15m. Its scores of 21.33Mbit/s and 20.8Mbit/s were the fastest from the ADSL Draft-N routers, but its 25m score of 3.96Mbit/s was below average.

When connected to the RangeMax Next CardBus adaptor, the router kept dropping its connection, but setting the router manually to wireless channel one solved the problem. The router was the second fastest overall at 1m with 41.41Mbit/s, and was the fastest ADSL router at 15m with 35.72Mbit/s. Again it was slow at 25m, with just 2.07Mbit/s.

Netgear's RangeMax Next ADSL router is affordable and fast at all but the longest ranges. Unless range is your main priority, it's the best Draft-N router here.

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