Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR4500 Review

Negear's N900 Wireless Dual band Gigabit Router is the latest in a recent lineup of impressive dual-band routers from Netgear such as the Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR3700) and the N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4000). The N900 is bigger than either of its predecessors, supports 450 Mbps on both bands (Netgear's first router to market to do so), has dual USB ports and a CD-less setup. The best enhancement of all is that the upgraded hardware makes throughput at the 2.4 GHz band almost twice as fast as that of the N750 . This is great news, since so many wireless devices, like iPhones, iPods, e-readers, and so on can only connect wirelessly at 2.4 GHz.

The N900's 5 GHz throughput is still amazing, but it's not much different than the throughput of the N750 which already had 450 Mbps 5 GHz- capable hardware. So perhaps some people who purchased the N600 or N750 won't have to run out and buy the N900. But anyone who connects a significant numbers of devices to a home wireless network, especially legacy devices, and wants what is likely the beefiest and fastest (at both bands) router on the market will want to consider the N900— despite a few small flaws. The N900 is especially suited for power gamers, frequent digital data streamers, home theatre media center enthusiasts or small business owners who do a lot of videoconferencing from a home network.  Anyone with more modest home networking needs will probably suffer sticker shock at the street price of the N900—$180 at most online retailers—about $50 more expensive than the N750.

Specs
I thought the N750 was a large router at 8.8 by 6.0 by 1.2 inches (HWD) and 1.2 lbs, but the N900 is the biggest 802.11n router I've seen. It measures 10.15 by 6.79 by 3.18 inches (HWD) and weighs a pound and a half. Its height is due to the permanently attached base that keeps the router upright. Making the base non-removable is a new move by Netegar with its latest routers; you could remove the base on the N600 and N750 and position the routers either horizontally or vertically. Reps at Netgear state the decision was made because vertical placement provides the best performance and also provides better thermal cooling for the high power amplifiers used for better range and throughput. Because of the size of the router and the fact it needs to run vertically, users may find that finding a place to put the router is a bit more difficult than with either the N760 or N600.

 
Check out How to Buy a Wireless Router

There is some powerful hardware inside the N900 WNDR4500, which uses the Broadcom chipset Bcm 4706 (network processor- MIPs 74K @ 600MHz) with two Bcm4331 for 3x3 2.4 GHz and 5GHz Wifi. The router has 128 MB Flash memory and 128 MB RAM.
The front panel has twelve LEDs: WPS, wireless on/off, power, WAN status, 2.4 GHz wireless network status, 5 GHz wireless network status, four LED for LAN port activity and two LEDs corresponding to the USB ports. The rear has the two USB ports, WAN/LAN ports, reset button, and power on and off button.

Setup
Netgear has moved to a browser-based CD-less install. The N900 Router can be installed by just connecting the router wired or wirelessly to your PC/MAC/Tablet/Smart-phone etc. The router comes pre-configured with SSIDs for both bands, security and passphrases. In addition to shipping with no CD, the device also doesn't ship with a user manual; a copy can be downloaded from the WNDR4500 support page on the Netgear website.

N900 Setup is easy, albeit not as elegant as that of the Cisco Linksys E3200's. The N900 ships with a booklet that details how to properly connect cables to the router using a color-coded sticker affixed to the device.  Once all the cables were plugged in, my wireless client, an HP EliteBook 8440w running Windows 7, saw the SSID and I entered the passphrase to connect (it's printed on a sticker that comes with the router). So far so good; what may confuse some is that, after connecting, my wireless status in Windows still showed no Internet access. I had to open the browser which automatically displays Netgear's Genie interface, the Web-based management UI for the router. The interface displayed the option to configure the router or to continue to go right to the Internet. I selected the latter and once the software confirmed my Internet connection was good, my wireless status showed Internet connectivity.

Testing Features and Performance

Testing the Router's Features and Performance
Once connected to the router, the Genie interface detected that there was new firmware available. The process of firmware upgrade is excellent. I could download the firmware, install it, and reboot the router all from within the interface. I dislike when a network device finds new firmware only to force you to click a link to the vendor's external website to hunt for it and download it manually.

The Netgear Genie interface has gotten a bit of a refresh. The interface opens up to a home page displaying router information such as Internet status, WLAN information (which scrolls across a pane in the interface and just looks cool), information on attached devices, parental control setup, ReadyShare for attached USB drive setup and guest network setup.

Parental Controls are done through an external site (which users are directed to after clicking Parental Control setup in the Genie interface), Netgear's Live Parental Controls powered by OpenDNS. To use the controls a required download for Windows and Mac has to installed. Double-clicking the downloaded file , kicks off Netgear's Live Parental Controls setup.

As noted in the reviews of the N600 and N750, Netgear's Live Parental Controls are decent enough for blocking questionable content. Users can set restriction levels for all devices connected to the router, the most restrictive being High—which protects against all adult-related sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, video-sharing sties, phishing attacks and what Netgear deems as "general time wasters." The least restrictive setting is, of course, None, and there are several other levels in-between.

These levels can be customized to only block certain categories of sites. You can also block by keyword, which works well as I discovered when blocking anything with the term "winter." I did not see a way to set restrictions on machines or individual users, although you can create or designate account to bypass the parental controls.

Since this is a router that's more likely to be embraced by the techie sort, there are plenty of techie features. It's easy to place this device into either bridge or repeater mode. Netegar also allows enabling  wireless repeating at either band. The N900 supports port forwarding and triggering, dynamic DNS, static routing, remote management, UPnP and support for IPv6. A Traffic Meter will record the volume of traffic passing through the WAN port. Although I did not see settings in the interface, Netgear confirmed the router supports DMZ and VPN pass-through.

The N900 really gets a performance boost at 2.4 GHz in both Mixed and Wireless N only modes, owed to the 450 Mbps capability at both bands. The device registered the highest dual-band router performance at the 2.4 GHz band tested in the lab, to date:

Click here for 2.4 GHz benchmarks

The router also has spectacular performance at the 5GHz band, although we've already witnessed similar results with the Editors' Choice-winning N750. Here are performance results compared to similarly competing dual-band routers with similar specs:

Click here for 5 GHz benchmarks

Performance is superb, but there's a concern that cropped up when testing this router that I did not encounter when testing the N750. While testing, I experienced connectivity drops on both a connected wireless client and on a wired client. While it's hard to lay blame on the router, the dropped connectivity is suspect because it happened to two different machines connected to the same router. I re-connected easily enough, but the dropped connections were a surprise.

Bottom Line
The N750 is another terrific dual-band router offering that's worth four stars, particularly for the incredible throughput at 2.4 GHz. This device is sure to please those with many legacy wireless devices. A couple of issues like not appearing to connect to the Internet right away after setup, the lack of flexibility in positioning, and the dropped connections I encountered during testing, keeps the N900 from dethrone Netgear's own N750 as our Editors Choice dual-band router. But if you are looking for a powerful router that blazes at the 2.4 GHz band (the band on which many consumer electronics devices likely connect), the N900 will definitely get the job done.

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Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR4500

4.0

See It

$187.59 at Amazon

MSRP $180.00

Pros

• Great throughput at both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.
• Easy setup.
• Parental controls and advanced features.

Cons

• Some software issues.
• Expensive.
• Must be positioned vertically.

The Bottom Line

Netgear's big beefy dual-band router delivers the fastest throughput we've seen on the 2.4 GHz band, which many of your consumer electronics devices probably use.