Trendnet TEW-810DR review

Trendnet’s TEW-810DR is an inexpensive 802.11ac router which can broadcast simultaneously on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The router is small and is designed to stand upright. There’s no way to mount it to the wall, but it’s small enough to hide away without much difficulty. It has a black plastic chassis that with a brushed metal texture, and all you’ll find on the front are two status LEDs for power and internet connectivity status. 

There’s no built-in modem, so you’ll need to connect the router to an external modem through its WAN port. This port is only rated at 10/100Mbit/s speed, which could be limiting if you have super-high-speed internet from an ISP such as Virgin Media. Similarly, the router’s four LAN ports are also only rated at 10/100Mbit/s. 

The back of the router is otherwise very basic, with just reset, power and WPS buttons. There aren’t any USB ports for sharing storage devices, and there’s no physical button to turn off the wireless. You can, however, schedule times when the router will turn off wireless broadcasting through the web interface. 

As soon as you plug the router in, it begins broadcasting on both its 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Both are easy to identify and have a password turned on by default. You can configure a guest network on each band, so that visitors can have internet access but without access to your local network. It’s also possible to configure two additional SSIDs per band, which means you can give guests access to your network without having to give up a private wireless password.

We found the web interface straightforward to use, although some settings were hidden behind more sub-menus than we would have liked and required some hunting about to find. Most of the options you’ll need are found in the Basic menu, such as configuring wireless SSIDs and passwords. The more advanced functions like port forwarding and QoS (Quality of Service) are under the ‘Advanced’ menu. When you initially access the web interface it will take you through a setup wizard to help get your internet connection working. 

We tested the router’s wireless speeds using our test laptop’s integrated Intel Dual Band Wireless N-7260 adaptor. Using the router’s 2.4GHz wireless network, we saw speeds of 42.5Mbit/s at 10m, which is above average, and 31.9Mbit/s at 25m, which is one of the best results we’ve seen on the 2.4GHz band. Performance on the 5GHz band was less impressive, with a below-average 93.2Mbit/s at 10m, but 49.7Mbit/s at 25m is good for a cheap router. 

When using Trendnet’s TEW-805UB 802.11ac USB3 adaptor (£35 from www.argos.co.uk), performance was actually worse. With the router broadcasting at 802.11n on its 5GHz band, we saw only 25.6Mbit/s at 10m, dropping to 16.3Mbit/s at 25m. With the router set to 802.11ac, performance dipped even further to just 25.6Mbit/s at 10m and a crawling 2.4Mbit/s at 25m. 

The Trendnet TEW-810DR is an inexpensive wireless-AC router with particularly impressive performance on the 2.4GHz band, and reasonable speeds at 5GHz, too. Its USB adaptor is to be avoided, but if you plan on using the router with older 2.4GHz devices and standard wireless cards such as you might find in an Intel-based laptop, it’s a good buy.