Eminent EM4565 review

The Eminent EM4565 is a small, glossy black box that’s just wide enough to fit an ADSL and four Fast Ethernet ports alongside its two antennas. They enable it to reach a theoretical top speed of 300Mbit/s, although in practice it achieved fairly typical speeds of around 40Mbit/s at up to 10m range. At a 20m range, it maintained speeds that were fast enough for web surfing, and performed particularly well in conjunction with an Eminent USB Wi-Fi dongle, managing almost 13Mbit/s.

The web-based configuration page is exactly the same as that found on TP-Link’s routers, although the colours have been changed to fit Eminent’s brand and some glaring mistranslations have been fixed. The first page has a setup wizard, which prompts users to change the router’s administration password and enter ADSL account details. It doesn’t address wireless security, though.

There’s also a setup utility on CD-ROM. This offers the choice of setting up the router or setting up wireless security, and it’s aimed squarely at novice users, with help on how to connect the various ports on the router to a PC and telephone line. Choosing the first option requires having detailed information, such as VPI and VCI numbers, from your ISP.

Diving into the web-based configuration page isn’t a good idea for new users, as it mixes arcane settings with basic ones, making it harder to navigate for those who don’t know the ins and outs of networking. Expert users will find a number of interesting features, though, such as WDS, VLANs, QoS and sophisticated routing and firewall options.

It’s worth noting that channel bonding is turned on by default, which will cause heavy interference for any other wireless networks in the area, and possibly degrade the EM4565’s performance too. It’s also worth using a Windows utility such as InSSIDer (tinyurl.com/inssider) to find a free Wi-Fi channel: the EM4565’s automatic channel selection always chose Channel 1 in our tests.

Although it supports a number of advanced features, the EM4565’s interface is unintuitive, and at this price we’re disappointed not to find support for USB devices or Gigabit Ethernet. It offers little more than the TP-Link TD-W8961ND, which is little more than half the price.