TRENDnet GREENnet 300 Mbps Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Gigabit Router TEW-673GRU (Black)

9 Review to this product

• 

  A. Rodriguez
  November 14th, 2010 on 3:52 am

  Rating

  I’ve had this router for about 2 weeks and love it. I got rid of my DIR-655 that recently died and glad I did. This router absolutely screams on the WAN side. I’m getting about 180-200 Mbps and that is plenty for Bit Torrent and similar applications. I would highly recommend this router.
• 

  J. Adongay
  November 14th, 2010 on 5:03 pm

  Rating

  I get suddenlink 10 MB down/sec:1 MB up/sec cable internet service

  Speed: With this router I get about 10.1-10.4 MB/sec downspeed and 1.03 upspeed via [...] via BOTH wan and wireless! With the cisco e3000 I would get about 8.5-9.7 MB/sec downspeed and similar upspeeds.

  Set-Up: The Cisco set-up is pretty idiot proof, but the interface for advanced settings is lacking. With the Trendnet, while not as easy to set-up, it’s pretty intuitive if you just follow the instruction booklet.

  Range: Have yet to carry my laptop outside and really test it out, but I get “excellent” signal on my crappy lenovo x60 with Class G wireless.

  Wired Printer set-up: Once you install the driver from the included CD printing to my usb-linked-to-router printer was very painless and easy. Cisco e3000 only supports wireless printers (so if you’re like me and don’t have a state-of-the-art wifi printer you’re sol for network printing with the e3000).

  LCD monitor: e3000 doesn’t have one… but… on my model it kinda sucks. If I try to change any settings via the web-interface or install new devices onto the wireless network the picture on the screen scrambles. I just downloaded the newest firmware and it still has this problem. Hopefully future firmware updates fix this because otherwise, the 673GRU is phenomenal.

  Network shared storage: I attached a 2gb usb jumpstick to the router (note the 673gru has 2 usb ports, e3000 only has 1) and it was easy to access via the network software. I really wish it would just appear as a removable drive under “My Computer” like a native usb port, but I’m happy with the performance. The e3000 didn’t even recognize my jumpstick – in fact, on the e3000 you had to go through this annoying step of creating shared folders (ugh…).

  I bought this router knowing I’ll be getting a sweet Class N Dual band capable laptop within the next few months, in the meantime, I’m very happy with this purchase!

  *Note to TrendNet* This is a 5 star router if you can fix the screen scrambling with a firmware update.
• 

  A. Kang
  November 14th, 2010 on 5:06 pm

  Rating

  So I decided to upgrade my wireless router to a dual band, I moved into a new condo and everybody had a wireless router and I knew it would be trouble. I checked and nobody was using the 5GHz spectrum so I knew it was the way to go.

  I initially purchased the Netgear WNDR3700. Objectively, The Netgear is a nice router too but I had to exchange 2 units of the Netgear because of an issue with the wired gigabit ports going to sleep and not waking up. Do a google search for WNDR3700 and Tivo and you’ll see complaints about the Netgear. Anyway, so I had to find another dual band router after wasting 2 weeks with the Netgear. I really liked the Netgear much better than the Trendnet because it has a hackable firmware using DD-WRT but hey if the ports go to sleep and won’t wake back up, you can’t use it.

  Setup of the Trendnet was very straight forward, nothing out of the ordinary. The best features of the router is the 3 year warranty compared to 1 year for Netgear and other companies. I did have a older Trendnet I bought from amazon 2 years ago. I was about to throw it in the trash when I looked up the warranty and it was 3 years. It was a bit of a hassle to call them up, get transferred to India, talk to 2 levels of tech support, then you email someone in the US that you talked to the 2 levels of tech support, then they RMA your device. I did have proof of purchase but they didn’t even ask for it but then again, my router which was a single band N didn’t come out more than 3 years ago. They sent me a brand new one within 2 weeks. So warranty support is top notch, a bit of a hassle but I did get a new machine.

  If you read the reviews, this router gets good ratings for speed. The LCD screen is nice in theory but you’ll never use it. It has these 4 buttons and not easy to use at all. I am not going to sit there for hours learning how to use it because it’s not that helpful to begin with. The router has a blue led light in front that is always on. This is the most annoying thing in the world. Who designs something like this, this blue light can light up the whole room at night. I think someone at Trendnet needed a night light, so they decided to put one on this router. No joke, the light is bright and it’s just annoying. It’s not like normal flashing lights on a router, it’s a blue beam and you might go blind if you stare directly at it. The router comes with extra rubber feet nubs in case you decide to put the router on it’s side, vertically. Use the rubber feet to cover the blue light.

  Another bad, no guest network, so that if you have friends over, you don’t have to give them the password to your network. The netgear had that feature and all the expensive routers do to. The USB ports are worthless, you need to install a software to use it and only the computer that you installed the software on can use the device attached. So if you attach a printer to it, only the computer you installed the software will be able to use it. Not every computer on the network.

  Overall, I am keeping the router, I have no problems with the gigaports like I did with the Netgear. There’s really nothing special about this router compared to others in its range but it gets the job done and the price is decent.
• 

  Jason A. Myers
  November 14th, 2010 on 6:14 pm

  Rating

  Not a bad router. LCD screen is good. I entered in a very long-winded review earlier, but it never got posted.

  So, to summarize: My wife can connect easily from across the house and downstairs from the router (2700 sq ft)

  The router turned on and just worked.

  The LCD screen is good, but not very intuitive.

  Also, and this is important. This device operates on DUAL bands, which means it operates in the 2.4 Ghz range and the 5. Ghz range. It actually broadcasts two distinct networks. But if you only have devices (historically) that can see the 2.4 Ghz range, you will never even know the 5 Ghz one is out there.
  
  So before you buy this, and think you’re going to operate on both bands, make sure your devices operate on both bands.
• 

  Prosaic
  November 16th, 2010 on 2:49 pm

  Rating

  Installation and set up was easy. Fast as fast can be. Only issue encountered: wireless printer did not want to connect, tech-support recommended (erroneously) to change security to WEP. Changed it to WPA-Auto and all is well. I did not install the router software (I normally let the OS handle it).
  
  All in all, a great dual band router.
  
• 

  Pasch
  November 17th, 2010 on 9:30 pm

  Rating

  I recently upgraded an older Linksys router for with this one. This product is very impressive. Throughput is much better to all devices connected on my network. The dual band is nice also because I can segregate traffic.
• 

  Stephen D. Alters
  November 17th, 2010 on 11:44 pm

  Rating

  I had this router for a several weeks now and have only a few complaints. The display does get messed up, but this had no effect on its actual performance. I finally got annoyed enough to upgrade the firmware. My biggest complaint is the USB connectors in the back. I hooked up a couple hard drives to it and noticed everyone had full rights to them, also I would lose connectivity to them about 30 minutes in. I’ve decided to just use a file server for more options and control.

  On the good side, setup was easy and I haven’t had any internet connections problems with it.

  Bottom line: Most people would be happy with a cheaper router.

  Update: The firmware flash did not fix the display issue.
• 

  rplieth
  November 18th, 2010 on 2:52 am

  Rating

  I received the router a few days ago. Got it all hooked up. The display isn’t anything all that fancy and it in fact is more or less useless as the button response is not great and takes a while to get to the info you need, you can just use the web config interface. It looks high tech anyhow. I bought this to get more throughput than my prior D-Link DIR-655, also I think the D-Link was the culprit to frequent disconnects during online gaming. For the time it worked, it did seem to be almost double the speed. The web interface take some getting used to, I had all my devices on my network plugged in but the DHCP table didn’t recognize them (though they had connectivity). I prefer to set static ip reservations for my devices, however given they were not showing up in the table, I had to hook only one device up at a time for it to show up with an IP and MAC and then reserve it. Also, though I’m sure it’s for good measure… it takes a whopping 2 minutes just for the slightest change to be made to the router which was painstaking when configuring 10 static reservations. What was the worst was the fact that it got bricked after I attempted to flash to the latest firmware (from rev 24 to rev 36 I think). I made sure I had the right firmware and followed instructions but after the 2 minute counter, nothing happened on the web config page though it said “Succes…” Waited up to 10 minutes to make sure, checked router and it will not boot up past the splash/logo now. Customer service is of course script readers from India and quite impatient with users… I’m very tech savvy and had already done most everything he stated, seemed pretty eager to get me off the phone and he may have hung up on me at one point as the “call dropped”. Basically, I didn’t much care for their tech support across the world. I will see how the replacement from Amazon fairs. I may forego firmware updates for fear of another brick, and likely will not be calling tech support back.
• 

  S. Thomas
  November 19th, 2010 on 8:42 pm

  Rating

  Purchased the TRENDnet 673GRU with best of intentions, replacing my good old Linksys WRT. First off, signal strength – worse or no better than the old G router. Administration features – not great, thought he WRT had more and was easier to use. Had issues with the “Green” part, as it would cut off my RDP sessions (like it saw that the session was not in use after a short period of time and shut it down).

  Overall, I returned this and purchased a Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router. Love the Netgear – far stronger signal, way more admin. features and easier to use. I paid less as well.

  The TrendNEt LCD screen was strange, I just put it high up on a shelf in a closet – maybe some use the screen but I see it as a big waste.