Maximum PC Belkin RSS Feed

Belkin N+ Wireless Router

Michael Brown — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:00:28 -0500

Be our guest!

With 802.11n Draft 2.0 routers becoming as common as Storm Troopers at Comic-Con, manufacturers need a feature that sets their product apart from the crowd. Like many of its competitors, Belkin added a second radio to its N+ Wireless Router—but this one is used for a very different purpose.

Rather than operating on a separate frequency (to separate audio and video streams from more mundane data), the second 2.4GHz radio on Belkin’s router establishes a guest network that limits clients to Internet access. Belkin’s web interface provides extremely limited access to this second radio’s settings: You can turn this radio on or off, change its SSID and passphrase, and choose between WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key or “Hotel Style” security.

Belkin's engineers limited the N+ to two antennas. Might that explain the router's poor wireless performance?

If the router is operating “Hotel Style,” any guests connecting to the router are greeted by a landing page that informs them they must contact the network administrator to obtain the passphrase in order to gain access to the Internet. In either mode, once they’ve entered the correct phrase, they can surf the web freely while your private network remains off-limits. This feature would be even cooler if you could customize the landing page and upload it to the router’s firmware.

The N+ is equipped with a USB port, but it’s limited to playing host to a FAT, FAT32, or NTFS mass storage device—adding NAS to the router’s repertoire. But we’d be a lot more excited about this feature if it also allowed us to share a USB printer over the network. We’re equally unenthused by the router’s Broadband Download Speedometer, a set of blue LEDs that has appropriated the front-panel real estate typically used to inform you of the status of the ports on the integrated four-port gigabit switch. Where most routers have LEDs that inform you of the speed at which each port is operating—amber for 100Mb/s and green for 1Gb/s, for instance—the N+ provides a graphic representation of your Internet connection’s download speed. Considering that we can obtain our Internet connection speed using any number of websites—in actual numbers—Belkin’s idiot lights just aren’t very useful.

Far more useful is the N+’s support for 802.11e Wi-Fi Multimedia Quality of Service, which assigns VoIP and media traffic higher priority than other types of packets traveling across the network. We also appreciate the fact that we can turn its routing function off and use it solely as a wireless access point and switch. In fact, that’s the role we’ve relegated the N+ to at Maximum PC Lab North, because it’s dead slow as a wireless router.

We tested the N+ with Belkin’s chubby F5D8055 USB Wi-Fi adapter (the 3.13 x 1.13-inch device blocked an adjacent USB port on our notebook) and achieved TCP/IP throughput of a none-too-impressive 54.1Mb/s in our kitchen test (20 feet from the router with an insulated wall and a set of cabinets in between). As you can see from our benchmarks, however, the Belkin performed much better at range than the comparably priced Linksys WRT310N, which has fewer features.

New Belkin Gadget Turns Car Cig Lighter into Tasteful USB Charger

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:32:43 -0500

Does your car have a USB port? Kick that nasty smoking habit and it just might. By freeing up your car's cigarette lighter, you can then shove Belkin's Micro Auto Charger into the socket and charge your BlackBerry, iPod, or other USB devices.

The Micro Auto Charger comes with a single 1-amp USB "quick-charge port for fastest possible charge" and sits nearly flush with the dashboard, Belkin says. For a little more jingle (and a lot less svelte), Belkin also offers the Dual Auto Charger, which tosses an extra 500mA USB port and USB-to-mini-USB cable into the mix.

You'll have to wait until next month for the Micro Auto Charger, which will sell for $15, or $20 if you want Belkin to include a iPode/iPhone cable. Those interested in the Dual Auto Charger can pick one up now for $30.

Belkin May Have a History of Unethical Practices

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:22:20 -0600

Although Belkin denied any wrongdoing on its part when two of its employees were recently caught soliciting positive reviews for money, an anonymous person, claiming to have served the company for a decade, has slammed the company’s CEO Mark Renoso for encouraging such unethical tactics.

The anonymous person claims to have himself performed “dirty deeds” for Mark Renoso. He made these allegations against the company on the blog that broke the Belkingate story.

This happens to be the second instance of an anonymous Belkin employee accusing the company of unabashedly resorting to unscrupulous means to further its interests. Gizmodo had very recently published an email from an anonymous Belkin employee, who claimed that even Belkin’s employees maintain a safe distance from the company's products, including the free ones.

Image Credit: TheDailyBackground

Belkin Employee Caught Soliciting Positive Reviews for Pay

Paul Lilly — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:35:40 -0600

If you've ever wondered why user reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, it's because of incidents like this. Amazon operates a site called Mechanical Turk, which Amazon describes as "a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence." Thousands of low paying tasks are available for registered users to complete, such as transcribing audio, identifying objects in a photo or video, and other chores humans are still better at than computers. But it was never intended as an outlet for companies to solicit positive user reviews, and that's what a Belkin employee was caught doing.

According to an ad posted on the site, Michael Bayard, Business Development Representative at Belkin, offered to pay users 65 cents for each positive 5/5 review they posted, instructing them to "write as if you own the product and are using it." The ad even asks users to look for negative reviews and mark them as "not helpful."

It didn't take long for Belkin to catch wind of the situation and offer a statement denying knowledge of what was going on.

"It was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment," wrote Mark Reynoso, Belkin President. "Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this."

Reynoso goes on to say that this is an isolated incident and has worked with Amazon to remove all associated postings.

Wireless HDMI Soars Into Living with Belkin's FlyWire

Paul Lilly — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:45:38 -0500

No matter how strong your cabling kung-fu might be, there's a pretty good chance that behind your home theater's assortment of receivers, set-top boxes, game consoles, and other electronic doodads sits a gnarly mess of wires. Most visitors never catch a glimpse of the clutter hidden behind your entertainment center, but you know it's there. Worse yet, you have to navigate through the wired jungle whenever you upgrade your A/V rack. You know that streaming Netflix player you're waiting to arrive from Roku? Get ready to wade through wires when it gets there.

Belkin believes it has a better way, and its FlyWire box looks poised to make cable clutter a thing of the past. Belkin's FlyWire HDMI box transmits both standard- and high-definition video anywhere in your home on the 5GHz band, and promises to penetrate through walls. And because FlyWire doesn't compress your video, Belkin claims its will even handle high definition gaming with aplomb. It even works with HDCP-compliant devices.

Look for FlyWire to spread its wings on retail shelves in October for $999 with IR backchannel capabilities, or $699 for an in-room solution sans IR.

Image Credit: Belkin

Best of the Best 2007

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:11:52 -0600

Every year, a procession of PC parts enters our Lab. Each component is tested mercilessly, but only a handful manage to win us over with a combination of killer performance, unique skills, and an all-inclusive feature set. Over the following pages, we pay tribute to those proud few and explain what makes them stand out among their peers in each major PC category. Ladies and gentlemen, we present this year’s hardware best in show!

Best CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650

Intel’s been on cruise control for more than a year, but that doesn’t mean the giant has been asleep at the wheel. On the heels of its proven 65nm Core 2 Quad design, Intel gets tiny with a new 45nm process chock-full of under-the-hood enhancements that boost performance 10 to 15 percent over its predecessor in a clock-for-clock comparison. But the real story of the 45nm Penryn chip is its clock-speed headroom. While the 65nm quad cores top out at 3GHz (with overclocked chips pushing 3.73GHz), the QX9650 promises to push clock speeds far higher thanks to the more efficient 45nm process. The only downside to Penryn is that it won’t work in some older motherboards. Nevertheless, this is the best CPU in town. $1,000, www.intel.com

Best Motherboard: Asus P5E3 Deluxe

If you don’t like controversy, stop reading. After taking Asus’s new P5E3 Deluxe motherboard and its new Intel X38 chipset for a ride, we’re willing to toss aside conventional power-user wisdom and embrace this DDR3 non-SLI board as our top pick. Wha, wha, what?! Just hear us out: First, the board supports Intel’s new 45nm Penryn—our favored CPU. Second, DDR3 is beginning to hit speeds that make it attractive—at 1,800MHz, who gives a damn about latency? We’re also willing to forgo SLI support—for now—when single-card performance is so damned fast. (In the meantime, maybe Nvidia will finally unlock SLI on Intel chipsets.) The hardcore features and killer performance of this board make it worth the trade-off.
(Reviewed at http://tinyurl.com/2cvl4b) $280, www.asus.com

Best Air Cooler: Zalman CNPS9700 LED

The fact that we’ve adopted the CNPS9700 as a benchmark against which we compare all other coolers is a testament to the raw strength of this shiny little guy. It’s just that powerful; it’s loud too, but if you want your CPU temps lowered to the extreme, the CNPS9700 is the cooler to do it.
(Reviewed February 2007) $80, www.zalmanusa.com

Best Case: Cooler Master Cosmos

We’ve read the pages upon pages of forum posts complaining about the Cosmos: that it’s too bulky, that it’s too warm, that it sucks. Well, you disbelievers are wrong! We’ve found nothing but blissful joy when using this holiest of holy chassis. Its adherence to screwless construction and soundproofing, not to mention its front-panel eSATA support and durable exterior, made the Cosmos the natural choice for this year’s Dream Machine, and it remains our favorite to this day. To praise this case more would require ticker tape and a flashy car.
(Reviewed October 2007) $200, www.coolermaster.com

Best Videocard: Asus EN8800 GTX

The videocard market has been a one-horse race this year. Nvidia obliterated AMD without doing much of anything new. And while this might seem out of character for Maximum PC, we’re not anointing a card with Nvidia’s absolute fastest GPU—the 8800 Ultra—with our Best of the Best designation.

No, we’ve decided to stick with the 8800 GTX, as represented by Asus’s EN8800 GTX. It’s fast, it’s quiet, and it delivers incredible performance with DX9 (its DX10 performance is admittedly less impressive). Yes, the Ultra is faster. It’s also hotter and a whole lot more expensive. We just don’t think the modest speed bump justifies the mountain of cash you’ll need to acquire one.
(Reviewed January 2007) $550, www.asus.com

Best Optical Drive: Samsung SH-S203B

It’s all well and good to have next-gen hardware—if it makes sense. And right now, with a format war raging and hardware and media costs still sky high, next-gen optical is a foolish choice for most folks. The majority of disc-burning and -reading needs are best handled by a good old-fashioned DVD burner, and Samsung’s SH-S203B is our fave in this category, offering a SATA interface, 20x write speeds, and a competitive price.

(Reviewed October 2007) $70, www.samsung.com

Best Monitor: Gateway XHD3000

While we’re still admirers of the large 1920x1200 native-res LCDs we’ve been recommending the last few years, the widespread adoption of these screens has definitely diminished their cachet. So we’re thrilled that a really, really high-res screen is now a viable option. Thanks to Gateway’s XHD3000, power users can enjoy all the benefits of a 30-inch, 2560x1600 panel without suffering any of the indignities inherent to other 30-inch LCDs. The XHD3000’s unique use of an internal scaler means you can choose among multiple interface options, adjust the screen’s image in a variety of ways, and play high-def content at its intended res. Righteous!

(Reviewed on here) $1,700, www.gateway.com

Best Wi-Fi Router: D-Link DIR-655

It’s been a long wait, but 802.11n wireless routers are finally worth buying—even if the IEEE hasn’t published the final spec. After testing models from every major vendor, we found that D-Link’s DIR-655 offers the best combination of features and performance. With unparalleled tweakability, customizable quality-of-service settings, best-in-class range and throughput, and a built-in Gigabit Ethernet switch, no other router comes close.

(Reviewed November 2007) $130, www.dlink.com

Best Backup Drive: Seagate FreeAgent Pro

Let’s get the messy details out of the way first: The single-drive FreeAgent Pro is slower than Western Digital’s RAID-enabled MyBook Pro Edition II. But that’s only if you consider the storage mediums themselves. The MyBook Pro II supports only USB and FireWire connections, while the FreeAgent Pro provides support for both those specs as well as eSATA, making it the ultimate winner for file transferring. And unlike the MyBook, it works perfectly in Vista!

(Reviewed here) 300, www.seagate.com

Best Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (1TB)

We were inches away from declaring Hitachi’s 7K1000 terabyte drive the best hard drive of 2007, when—whammo!—terabyte offerings from Western Digital and Seagate hit the Lab within a day of each other. Storage competition makes us salivate, so we couldn’t wait to run the drives through our benchmark obstacle course.
It’s a good thing we did: Seagate’s four-platter Barracuda 7200.11 drive is the fastest terabyte drive we’ve ever tested, with an average read speed of 86.6MB/s—a whole 15 megabytes a second faster than the 7K1000. Attribute the win to the Barracuda’s increased areal density. At 250MB per platter, the ’Cuda packs more for a decisive read/write punch!
(Reviewed Holiday 2007) $330, www.seagate.com

Best Thumb Drive: Corsair Voyager GT 8GB

Corsair’s Voyager GT is the zenith of zippy thumb drives. Sure, there are larger keys—including the 16GB Voyager—but their speeds don’t compare to those of the blazing-fast Voyager GT 8GB. It’s fast and spacious enough to swallow nearly the entire contents of a dual-layer DVD; Corsair’s Flash Voyager GT is hands-down our pick for petite portable storage.

(Reviewed February 2007) $150, www.corsair.com

Best Digital Media Player: SanDisk Sansa Connect

There’s plenty of buzz about Apple’s new iPod Touch, but that device didn’t ship in time for us to consider. No matter, we’ll happily give SanDisk’s Sansa Connect the win in this category. The Sansa Connect’s built-in Wi-Fi capabilities tie into Yahoo’s Launchcast Internet radio and Yahoo Music Unlimited services to provide a nearly unlimited source of music you can share with other subscribers.
(Reviewed July 2007) $150, www.sandisk.com

Best NAS Box: QNAP TS-109 Pro

It’s hard not to love QNAP’s TS-109 Pro network attached storage (NAS) box. For starters, it sprinkles magic dust over your data transfers—it was the speediest of all the NAS devices we’ve ever tested in both our small- and large-file transfer tests. The TS-109 also comes with a plethora of outstanding features: It can stream music (iTunes supported!), download BitTorrent files, act as a server, back up your PCs, and even pull files from USB devices. Consider us smitten!

(Reviewed here) $330—drive not included, www.qnap.com

Best Earbuds: Shure SE530

We’ve auditioned a number of innovative and great-sounding earbuds this year, including Etymotic’s wireless ety8 and M-Audio’s bass-boomin’ IE-20 XB, but nothing caressed our drums as tenderly as Shure’s SE530.

Three microdrivers in each earbud—one tweeter and two woofers—deliver the entire sonic spectrum with crystal clarity and plenty of oomph at the bottom end. They’re pricey, to be sure, but we think their excellent fit and audacious sound fully justify their cost.
(Reviewed August 2007, as model SE530PTH) $500, www.shure.com

Best Speakers: Audioengine 5

2007 was a good year for speakers, with a number of great systems going through the Lab’s sonic chamber. TBI’s passive Majestic Diamond I and B&W’s incredible Zeppelin (reviewed on page 88) were both exceptional. But we’re giving the nod to the Audioengine 5 bookshelf system, which combines outstanding character with features that render it useful for nearly any application.

It makes a great near-field stereo monitoring system, yet it can fill a room with sound. There’s a built-in USB port on top for charging your portable media player, and an AC outlet in back that’s just the ticket for powering a streaming box.
(Reviewed May 2007) $350, www.audioengineusa.com

Next: Worst of the Worst!

Worst of the Worst

With so much killer hardware in our midst, you might think we’re strangers to crappy products. Not so! Here are some of the lemons from 2007 and what we had to say about ’em

Reservoir Dogs
“By the end of the game, we were praying the cops would shoot us to put us out of our misery.”
(Reviewed January 2007)

Belkin Cable-Free USB Hub
“If Belkin’s Cable-Free USB Hub is any indication of what we can expect from other wireless USB products, the technology’s future is bleak.”
(Reviewed April 2007)

Overway Technology Vacuum Superconductive Heat Cooler
“Yes, it took more than half an hour to get the device in place. And for all that, we were rewarded with a cooler that actually performs worse than [a] cheapo stock cooler…”
(Reviewed June 2007)

Toshiba Portable External Hard Drive
“We sure can’t think of a compelling reason to pick up this device, as the Toshiba is as slow as it is featureless.”
(Reviewed November 2007)

Philips amBX Gaming Peripherals
“Amsterdam is just 66 miles from Philips’s headquarters in Eindhoven. Hmm. Could that explain how this bizarre concept got off the drawing board, into a factory, and onto retailers’ shelves without someone asking, ‘Why?’”
(Reviewed March 2007)

CoolerMaster iTower 930
“You could practically open a Greek restaurant with all the PITA that comes with assembling a computer using this case.”
(Reviewed February 2007)

Genius HS-04U Headset
“The Genius HS-04U is made of plastic, but it sounds like tin.”
(Reviewed July 2007)

Abit iDome D500 Digital 2.1
“Seriously, the audio that emerged from this milquetoast system was so blasé… we had to check the iDome’s subwoofer to make sure it was warm.”
(Reviewed February 2007)

Western Digital My Book World Edition II
“If you love holding down a power button for more than 20 seconds just to shut off a device, you’ll love WD’s My Book World.”
(Reviewed August 2007)

Belkin N1 Vison (F5D8232-4)

Michael Brown — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:18:07 -0600

Belkin’s N1 Vision and Trendnet’s Wireless N Gigabit are among the first routers to be benchmarked in our new real-world test environment: a 2,800 square-foot foot home in rural Northern California (call it Maximum PC Lab North). You’ll find all the details, including photographs, at Mike's blog.

Belkin’s N1 Vision takes user friendliness to a whole new level. This is the first router we’ve seen that offers extensive installation hand-holding right in the firmware—there’s no need to drop a CD in your drive.

The N1 Vision earns its name from the large LCD that reveals your network’s broadband speed, bandwidth consumption, time of day, the status of networked devices, and other useful information. And unlike the piddling four-port Fast Ethernet switch on Belkin’s N1, the N1 Vision packs a four-port Gigabit switch.

Enable the Guest SSID feature and the N1 Vision will set up a second password-protected network that enables authorized clients to access the Internet without granting them entrée to the rest of your network.

The other N1 couldn’t connect through our double-walled media room, but the N1 Vision connected to our mobile client at its furthest point outside the house (90 feet from the router); however, we presume radio waves have a difficult time penetrating the cement-fiber siding on the home we’re using for testing because none of the routers we’ve tested so far has performed well when the client is outdoors.

Many of the N1’s other limitations are also present in this fancier model: The Vision operates only in mixed mode (802.11b, -g, and –n), for instance, and its only useful quality-of-service option is “off.” The N1 Vision is a better choice for networking neophytes than the N1, but power users will crave more meat.

Belkin N1 (F5D8231-4)

Michael Brown — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:55:05 -0600

Note: This review was originally published in the November 2007 issue. Belkin has since released the N1 Vision, which we reviewed in January 2008.

Belkin’s N1 router looks gorgeous, and the company has put a lot of thought into making it easy for greenhorns to build a home network, but the N1 was the slowest in this field and it delivered very poor range.

This is the router to buy for your technophobe friends or relatives if you can’t be there to set it up. Belkin’s instructions start on the outside of the box: There’s a big “Open Here” label right on top. The first thing you see when you follow that command is an oversized, illustrated quick installation guide. A series of large LED-backlit icons on the router light up in sequence, providing comforting visual reassurance that each step in the process has been successfully completed.

Despite all this hand-holding, however, the installation routine doesn’t prompt the user to establish any type of wireless security. Perhaps Belkin figured that the user will become curious as to why the router’s “security” LED isn’t lit up and then delve into the digital user manual to find out. One thing’s for sure: The router’s built-in help is absolutely useless in this regard, referring to features that aren’t built into the device.

We’re also disappointed with the N1’s paltry selection of operating modes: You can run the router in mixed mode (802.11b/g/n) only. You can set 20MHz/40MHz channel bonding to auto, on (40MHz only), or off (20MHz only)—and that’s it. There are no QoS provisions, either.

At close range, the Belkin N1 was significantly slower than three of the five routers we reviewed. What’s worse, we couldn’t connect to it at all in our longer-range tests. We suspect that the N1 would perform better in a more typical residential environment, but then so would the rest of the field.

The competition would do well to follow Belkin’s lead in making wireless networks easier to set up and monitor, but Belkin needs to make this router more robust. And how about upgrading that chintzy Fast Ethernet switch to Gigabit while you’re at it?