Netduma R1 Review

The Netduma R1 router isn’t snake oil, they’ve done a lot of hard work to allow for a much more enjoyable gaming experience (purely from a lag point of view). The router is really nice and is made by gamers for gamers. The community around the router seems strong, and the support behind the router are actual developers.

Pros

• QoS (Congestion Control)
• This is made extremely easy, especially in comparison to OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Stock Firmware
• Even if someone is downloading using torrenting or UseNet and saturating your network you don’t have any lag in-game.
  Host Filtering/Geo-Filter
• This is made extremely easy, makes gaming much better because it limits the range that you are connecting to other players.
• Connecting to a VPN is much more simple and pretty than OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Stock Firmware(if they even support it).
• More importantly you can VPN only certain attached devices instead of the whole network (every device on the router) this is perfect for gamers because you can attach only your console to the VPN.
• Responsive UI
• Similar to Luci but it appears they hired a graphic designer
• Network Monitor
• Real Time graphs
• More modern UI then competitors
• Support
• This is the biggest PRO, the developers are actively working with customers to fix issues and make this router everything that gamers want.
• They have been providing support even during the Christmas holiday (night and day)
• They have used Skype and TeamViewer to help users that have complex network issues

In the Middle

• Hardware
• 600MHz single core CPU
• 128MB Ram
• Wireless N only no AC

Cons

• Bugs that are being “addressed”
• As this list is constantly changing go here
• No SSH/Telnet only a web manager (missing multiple settings)
• Wifi:



• Only 20MHz channel width no option for 40MHz option
• Low Tx Rate for wireless N should be around 300Mbps as with other routers
• UI for WiFi isn’t perfect and is somewhat confusing if you don’t know what you are doing.

Summary
If you are a gamer on a console or on PC, this router is worth the money [PERIOD]. However, if you are looking for a top of the line amazing hardware/wireless experience this isn’t the router for you.

Let me clear that up, because this router is running OpenWRT as the backbone 600MHz is more than enough to handle anything you throw at it. There really aren’t any better (hardware wise) routers out there if you are looking for real OpenWRT support.

Routers I’ve owned recently:

• Netgear R7000 “Nighthawk”
• Dual core 1GHz CPU
• Only DD-WRT support
• Wireless AC
• Linksys (“Belkin”) WRT1900AC
• Dual core 1.4GHz CPU
• Only McWRT support (and a bad wifi driver even in Stock Firmware)
• Wireless AC