Tenda W1800R review

Fortunately, the quirks of its channel allocation proved not to have too great an impact on performance. We tested the router using both Tenda’s £20 W900U Wi-Fi adaptor, which supports 802.11ac, and our laptop’s integrated wireless chipset, which supports both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands but only uses the older 802.11n standard.

At 2.4GHz, we saw similar performance using both the integrated Wi-Fi and the adaptor. The laptop managed 39.5Mbit/s at 1m, 38.1Mbit/s at 10m and 14Mbit/s at 20m. That last figure is particularly good, although we’ve seen better performance from other routers at 1m and 10m. Using the adaptor, we got a slight improvement to all scores: 42.7Mbit/s at 1m, 40.6Mbit/s at 10m and 15.2Mbit/s at 20m.

Performance at 5GHz was very good all round. Although transfer speeds at 20m were a little slower than some rivals’, we were pleased by the strength and consistency of the connection maintained between laptop and router. Using the integrated wireless chipset, we got 87Mbit/s at 1m, 80.5Mbit/s at 10m and 12.6Mbit/s at 20m. The 802.11ac adaptor took at up to 119Mbit/s at 1m, 158.5Mbit/s at 10m and 25.2Mbit/s at 20m.

Priced at just £75, this is the one of the cheapest 802.11acs routers we’ve reviewed to date, and it proves that you don’t have to sacrifice performance or features to save money. You’ll need a compatible wireless adaptor to get the most out of its 802.11ac performance, but we were pleased to find that it worked will with our Centrino 2 laptop in all our tests. It’s a great and fast router, but its lack of UK settings means it just misses out on an award. If you can afford it, the BT Home Hub 5 is the better choice.