Hawking Technology HWDN1 review

Draft-N has made wireless networks easier to set up, faster, more reliable and with better range, but there are still times where one computer gets a weak connection.

There's nothing more annoying than having to reconnect a wireless network every few minutes because it loses the signal.

That's something Hawking hopes to fix with its HWDN1. It may look familiar - not just because it looks like a Star Wars toy from the 1980s, but also because it's Hawking's second product to feature a satellite-style dish. The first, the HWU8DD, was reviewed in What's New, Shopper 218, and gave excellent performance with 802.11g networks.

We hoped the HWDN1 would make a similar difference to Draft-N networks. The HWDN1 is a directional antenna, so you point the whole unit towards the wireless router to which you want to connect. The dish then provides better reception for any network in that direction, preventing any irritating loss of connection and, hopefully, increasing range and throughput.

The HWU8DD was a complex bit of equipment, with a dish that could be swivelled. It also had an inaccurate display that showed how strong the wireless signal was. With the HWDN1, the swivel function has gone. This is no loss, as it prevents the internal cables being broken. The wireless signal strength readout has also gone and has been replaced by a simple status light.

The HWDN1 installs its own client software, but we wouldn't recommend using it. It's unfriendly to look at, and makes it laborious to connect to a wireless network. Instead of prompting you to type in the network password, you have to do it manually. You also have to create a profile for each network. Using Windows' wireless wizard is by far the best option.

We tested the HWDN1 with Linksys's WAG325N Draft-N wireless router. Performance at 1m was close to the 68.3Mbit/s we got from Linksys's own CardBus network adaptor. At 10m we got almost 10Mbit/s faster throughputs than with Linksys's adaptor. USB adaptors usually slow down at range, but at 25m, the HWDN1 still managed an incredible 27.7Mbit/s. Even more impressive, at 35m through at least three walls, it was still transferring at 2.6Mbit/s. That might not be much good for file-sharing, but it's more than enough for browsing the internet.

The only downside is that the HWDN1 costs £59, which is expensive for a USB adaptor and rather more than Linksys' own-brand Draft-N adaptor. If your existing wireless adaptor is suffering from poor range, though, the HWDN1 should fix that and increase throughput, too.