Sitecom 300N X4 WLR-4000 Wireless router review -
Introduction
Sitecom WLR-4000 router review
Routers these days... You can purchase a dime a dozen and most of them end up all being the same, as such the more predominant manufacturers continuously seek to add new features to their product in order to differentiate themselves in the market. And that's difficult as there isn't a lot of extras you can do with a router really, you are tied to industry Ethernet and WIFI standards, you can make sure the throughput of the devices is good enough for modern age high-bandwidth file throughput and you can make the firmware as sexy as possible with a nice GUI and extensive feature set.
Sitecom introduces a series of standard routers but with a twist. They tagged their mainstream range X1, X2, X3 and a more enthusiast range X4, X5 and X6. They are all Gigabit models, but obviously the higher the number the better the feature set. All models now come with cloud security, and that's the new feature we'll discuss later on. Here's a small overview of the X4 router we'll put to the test today,
- Automatic Firmware update: automatically get the latest software improvements for free
- 802.11b/g/n Wireless Standard Protocol
- Wireless speed up to 300 Mbps
- 802.3u 802.3i 802.3ab
- Security: WEP 64 & 128 bits, WPA-TKIP, WPA-AES, WPA2, WPA-Radius
- Compatible with Dynamic IP, Static IP, PPPoE, PPTP internet connections
- Three internal antennas
- Quality of Service (QoS)
- Universal Plug & Play (UPnP)
- Application Layer Gateway (ALG)
But lets focus on the X4, X5 and X6, the complete SKU names for these units are WLR-4000, WLR-5000 en WLR-6000. The first (X4) is single band with a Gigabit switch, the second (X5) comes with dual-band WIFI and then the WLR-6000 also adds the 5 GHz band with a theoretical 450 MBit/sec throughput over WIFI.
SiteCom shipped the X4 model to reviewers so we are already limited in our tests from the get-go being on single band WIFI only.
But have a peek at the product and then let's dive into the review.
The Sitecom Powerline Ethernet adapters allow you to use your mains electricity circuit to transfer data, this way you can extend your network to wherever you have a free plug socket. The product we test today comes from Sitecom, their 500 Mbps plus Homeplug. The kit provides a connection of up to 500Mbits/sec. Divide that by 8 bits and you'd in theory would be able to see transfer speeds of 62.5 Megabyte per second. In practice, however we tested the maximum net data rate is much MUCH lower, 60~100 Mbits/sec - still that is faster than Wi-Fi and sufficient fenough or streaming high-definition video from say your PC with network shares to, for instance, your HTPC.
Sitecom Media Player 2TB MD-272 review
So the new Sitecom Media Player comes standard with a new improved GUI, but also hardware wise harbor the latest Realtek 1185 chipset, and that changes a thing or two as pretty much any of the performance issues we had noticed in 1080P content playback (with very high bit-rate) on the previous chipset now are a thing of the past. That Realtek 1185 chipset has an increased clock frequency, 500 MHz coming from 400 MHz on the original version. And as little as it sounds, it makes a serious difference. The HDD TV Media Player 2TB allows you to play digital films, music and photos directly on your TV with High Definition quality (1080p).
Sitecom 300N X4 WLR-4000 Wireless router review
Sitecom introduces a series of standard routers but with a twist. They tagged their mainstream range from X1, X2, X3 and a more enthusiast range from X4, X5 and X6. They are all Gigabit models, but obviously the higher the number the better the feature set. all models now come with cloud security, and that's the new feature we'll discuss later on. We test the X4 WLR-4000 model.
Sitecom MD-500 Digital Media Set review
One of the kits Sitecom recently introduced consists out of a Gigabit router for your intra and local area network connectivity, a storage unit which Sitecom calls 'Home Storage center' will function as NAS server for all your multi-media content like photo's, music and movies. And then a small all-in-one HTPC or TV media player as we like to call it these days. To top things off they throw in a Logitech Harmony 650 universal remote control. Aren't you just eager to see how this HTPC network platform will perform ?