Reviewing Edimax BR-6428nS V3 - What do you get when buying a low-priced router?

Reviewing Edimax BR-6428nS V3 - What do you get when buying a low-priced router?
Rating

Wireless Network Performance

Before we share the results of our measurements, let's take a look at the apartment that was used in our testing and how it is set up. You can see that the router is placed in the living room. The apartment is quite large, with many rooms and balconies.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

Our testing was done using a fast 1 Gigabit Internet connection that's capable of uploads on the Internet of up to 200 Mbps. We used a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for all our measurements and several software tools. Since we have not tested a router this affordable before, we decided not to compare it with more expensive models which outperform it easily.

We started by measuring the strength of the wireless signal across the apartment, using inSSIDer. Below you can see how the signal strength evolves from room to room when using the 2.4 GHz wireless network. As you can see, the numbers are OK in all rooms.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

Next, we measured how fast the Internet connection was, using SpeedTest. Below you can see how the download and upload speeds evolve from room to room. The numbers are not exactly spectacular. What we can easily see is that Edimax BR-6428nS V3 delivers fast connections in the rooms that are closer to it and slow connections in those which are further away from it. Also, the number of walls between the router and a certain room influences a lot the speed you get from your Internet connection. The bigger the number of walls separating them, the slower the speed gets.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

For our last set of measurements on the wireless network, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350 MB file between two computers connected to the network. Below you can see a chart with the average download and upload speed in each room. It's clear that local network transfers work faster than when downloading from the Internet. However, the distance between each room and the router, as well as the number of walls separating them, matters a lot and the speed decreases dramatically in certain rooms.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

Edimax BR-6428nS V3 is capable of providing reasonably fast wireless connections only in small spaces, without too many rooms and too many walls separating each room from the router.

Wired Network Performance

In order to test the quality of the wired Ethernet connection, we used a desktop PC, equipped with an Intel Core i5 4460 processor, running at 3.20GHz, 16GB of RAM and a very fast Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor, running at 1.9 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a fast 256 GB SSD drive from Samsung.

First, we measured the download and upload speeds using SpeedTest. As you can see, Edimax BR-6428nS V3 delivers only 100 Mbps wired connections, not 1 Gbps connections. Therefore, we could not take advantage of the performance offered by our test computer.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

Lastly, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350 MB file between two computers connected to the network. The results were quite similar to the previous set of measurements and they proved one more time that Edimax BR-6428nS V3 delivers 100 Mbps wired network connections.

Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review

Edimax BR-6428nS V3 is capable of offering only 100 Mbps wired network connections. If you have a fast computer with an SSD drive, you won't be able to enjoy fast network transfers because of this router's limitations.

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Extra Features

Edimax BR-6428nS V3 includes a couple of useful extra features:

  • Guest network - allows you to create a separate wireless network for your guests, so that they can access the Internet without getting access to your local network.

    Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
    Edimax BR-6428nS V3, router, access point, wireless, range, performance, benchmark, test, review
  • Wireless Schedule - allows you to set when the router turns on the wireless network. You can set a different schedule for each day of the week.

  • Wireless Site Survey - this tool scans for available wireless networks and shows you their name, band, channel, encryption type and so on. You can use it to identify a free channel that you can set for your own wireless network, so that you avoid some of the congestion on the 2.4 GHz wireless spectrum.

Product rating 3/5

Verdict

Edimax BR-6428nS V3 is one of the least expensive routers you can find on the market. In most shops it costs less than 50 USD and for this price, it delivers what you expect: a wireless network that works, which isn't very fast but it is straightforward to use and configure. Don't expect any bells and whistles, advanced options, fast 5GHz wireless connections and so on. Edimax BR-6428nS V3 is a good choice for those on a very tight budget, who need a working wireless network that is going to be used in small spaces and with a low number of devices. If you want speed and you have many wireless devices, you should put more money aside and invest in a router that is more expensive. We have reviewed plenty of such devices.

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