Benchmark Results: 1GB Transfer, Single File
We went into these tests not expecting much from the N150 units, and we ultimately learned to accept the weakness of Netgear’s adapter being the root of its poor showing here. Honestly, though, we expected better from D-Link. Getting spanked by the Belkin N150 is kind of embarrassing. TRENDnet’s TEW-654TR has the excuse of being a low-power travel router with no external antennas. Belkin’s N1 Vision also gets off to a rocky start here, although that 66 Mb/s location 1 result is as freakish as it is encouraging. In any case, this does not give us a lot of faith in routers with pretty LCD displays.
The interesting unit to watch here is Asus’s N13U. With a sub-$60 price, the nondescript router manages to keep pace with its more expensive N16 brother. This may turn out to be the best performance bargain of the roundup.
As an aside, we know that some people aren’t aware of the overhead impact multiple small files can have versus transferring a single file. Compare the two here and you’ll see a small but noticeable difference. If a 10% performance hit matters to what you do, consider making close friends with a decent compression program and bundle all of those loose files into one big .ZIP or .RAR.