Sitecom Wireless 300 XR Gigabit Gaming Router review

Sitecom's Wireless 300 XR Gigabit Gaming Router is designed to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your internet connection and give games and streaming media priority access to the internet.

We strongly recommend downloading and installing the latest firmware from www.sitecom.com. The firmware originally installed on our review sample didn't work very well and displayed the router's settings in a tiny frame. The current version is a massive improvement. The login page still looks very basic, but the main interface is well designed, with a huge range of features grouped under logical headings.

The StreamEngine QoS settings prioritise VoIP, gaming, video streaming, and file downloading without any user intervention, but you can assign different priorities to specific IP address and port combinations. Also included is StreamEngine's Wireless Intelligent Stream Handling (WISH), which applies similar traffic shaping to your local wireless network, both automatically and according to any settings you apply.

Draft-N wireless networking performed well in tests using Sitecom's own wireless adaptor and our Centrino 2 laptop. Even at a distance of 25m, we achieved transfer speeds of 24.9Mbit/s with Centrino 2 and an impressive 34Mbit/s using Sitecom's 300N USB Adaptor. This is one of the fastest speeds we've seen at this distance. At 10m, our Centrino 2 laptop connected at 36.4Mbit/s and the Sitecom adaptor at 47.9Mbit/s. Our older Centrino laptop, which uses 802.11g, managed 17.6Mbit/s at 10m. We tested the router's WiFi Protected Setup association using Sitecom's USB adaptor, which connected to the router immediately without any hassle.

All the features we'd expect are here, including Gigabit Ethernet ports for high-speed local networking, a firewall with port-forwarding and web filtering that allows you to prevent designated computers accessing specified web address and port combinations. Dynamic DNS (DDNS) providers include DynDNS.com and No-IP.com, both of which have free options.

This router performed well in all our tests and the new firmware interface is attractive and intelligently designed. However, there's little to justify the price. This isn't a dual-band Draft-N router - it simply uses the 2.4GHz band. If you don't do a lot of gaming or media streaming, either online or across your local network, you're unlikely to see any benefits. It also doesn't have a built-in ADSL modem.

Those who need an ADSL router should try SMC's SMC7904WBRA-N bundle. Cable users should opt for Linksys's WAG325N, which costs around £70.