LevelOne WBR-6000 N One review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 12 Nov 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Matt Smith

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

LevelOne is a relatively new brand to the UK, and this is the first time we've seen one of its products.

The WBR-6000 N One is a stylish-looking Draft-N wireless router with a black plastic chassis and orange and white detail. The three antennas are on the side of the router instead of the rear. This seems odd, but it means you can have your router on a rack or shelving unit with the antennas still exposed, rather than tucked away. It's a sturdy unit that should be able to resist a knock or two.

Installation was simple. The CD-based configuration wizard took us through the ISP, wireless and security settings in a few minutes. The manual is very helpful and includes all the necessary information about the router and how to make the right physical connections. There's also a paper version of the quick setup guide to refer to as you choose your settings on the screen.

Transfer speeds with a Centrino notebook were on a par with most Draft-N routers we've seen recently. We have seen Draft-N routers that can't establish a connection at our 25m range with Centrino, but the N One managed 2.86Mbit/s, which would be fast enough for web browsing and email.

Transfer speeds using LevelOne's £46 WPC-600 CardBus adaptor were faster but, again, the results were average for a Draft-N router. At 25m, the WBR-6000 achieved 5.53Mbit/s, a disappointing result compared to other Draft-N routers.

This is a decent router with reasonable throughput, but £84 is a lot to spend for this level of performance. Linksys's WAG325N ADSL Gateway costs a few pounds less and outperformed the N One in all our tests. It achieved a very respectable 5.75Mbit/s at 25m with our Centrino notebook and a whopping 66.3Mbit/s at near range with Linksys's own CardBus card.

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