Belkin Surf N150 review

Belkin’s Surf N150 has a minimalist design with a single indicator light to let you know if you’re connected to the internet or if there’s a problem. It doesn’t have a built-in modem, so ADSL subscribers will need to buy a separate Ethernet-port-equipped ADSL modem. The version with built-in ADSL (part code F7D1401UK) is £53 from www.dabs.com.

Belkin’s setup guide is clear and simple, and ideal for novice users. We opened the box to find the power and RJ45 cables already plugged into the back of the Surf N150, with small tags on each telling us what to connect them to. A CD in the box contains a Windows utility which sets up security and internet access.

Once the setup process is complete, the utility still runs in the background but it offers nothing more except links to the router’s web interface, so we uninstalled it. Belkin’s web interface is clear and easy to navigate, with options logically organised into groups such as LAN Setup, Internet WAN, Wireless, Firewall and Utilities.

The Surf N150 has most of the common options we’d expect to find on a router, but it does lack some features, such as QoS, so you can’t prioritise certain types of traffic on your network. It also lacks many of the features found on more expensive Belkin routers such as the Best Buy award-winning Belkin Play Max N600 HD, including Music Mover and Memory Safe, but these aren’t particularly useful.

Channel-bonding is enabled by default, so we turned this off for our testing. We left on auto channel selection, and this did a good job of picking a clear channel. At one metre we could transfer files at a quick 44Mbit/s with both our Centrino 2 laptop and Belkin’s own Surf USB wireless micro adaptor (part code F7D1102ed, £20), but the USB adaptor wasn’t so good at range, managing 25Mbit/s compared to 38Mbit/s with our laptop. The Surf USB held the signal better at long range, however, transferring at 6Mbit/s where the Centrino 2 chipset could only manage 3Mbit/s.

The Surf N150 has comprehensive port forwarding under ‘Virtual Servers’ in the Firewall page. An impressive number of games and applications are pre-configured to work with the router. It also supports a DMZ, and Dynamic DNS using the DynDNS service.

One feature we really liked is the Self Healing option, which lets you set a schedule by which the router will re-initialise its connection. This will refresh your connection to your ISP and re-acquire a wireless channel, and you can also set it to check for firmware updates. It’s a fancy name for an automatic reset, but it’s still useful.

The Surf N150 is a bit more expensive than other non-ADSL N-lite routers we’ve seen, such as the TP-Link TL-WR741ND, but its easy setup process, fast wireless speeds and clear, well-organised interface make it worth the extra. The ADSL version is more expensive, but if you’re after a painless router experience you should spend the £20 premium over last month’s Budget Buy award-winning TP-Link TD-W8961ND.