Amped Wireless RTA2600 Athena Review - Routers

Our Verdict

The Athena router's proficient looks and ability to tweak just virtually every operational setting will appeal to gamers, only the router lags backside others when it comes to delivering data.

For

Quick setup
Highly customizable software
Monitoring capabilities
High-gain antennas and internal amplifiers
Good throughput.

Confronting

Expensive relative to routers with like performance
Brusk on range.

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Athena router'south good looks and ability to tweak merely most every operational setting will appeal to gamers, but the router lags behind others when it comes to delivering data.

Pros

+
Quick setup
+
Highly customizable software
+
Monitoring capabilities
+
High-gain antennas and internal amplifiers
+
Good throughput.

Cons

-
Expensive relative to routers with like performance
-
Short on range.

The Amped Wireless RTA2600 Athena router ($260) combines high-operation networking with an aggressive, gamer-oriented design. It'south quick to prepare up and offers a full range of Wi-Fi customizability, but its range fails to print.

Design

The RTA2600 Athena looks more similar a starfighter from a sci-fi movie than a piece of networking hardware.

The RTA2600 Athena looks more than like a starfighter from a sci-fi motion picture than a piece of networking hardware. The angled sides and cutaway vents on this blackness plastic case should entreatment to the gamer lurking within all of united states of america. The Athena lacks the subtle sophistication of Google'south OnHub tower, but it's actually one-third smaller (nine.1 x 7.3 x 1.iv inches) and withal sports the kind of looks that shouldn't be hidden from view.

The Athena has four spiral-on antennas that you can aim depending on your surround. Rated at 5 dBi, the antennas are much more powerful than the standard stub antennas, typically rated at iii or 4 dBi, that you get with traditional routers. With the standard RJ-SMA connector, the antennas tin exist changed at any fourth dimension. One downside of the Athena router is that, unlike OnHub, it does not include an additional congestion antenna to monitor the network in society to avoid data traffic jams.

The Athena's indicator lights are subtler than the typical router'southward. Instead of eight or 10 red, xanthous and light-green LEDs, the Athena has a line of five lights on pinnacle. These lights show the device's status: turned on, operating in the ii.iv- and 5-GHz bands, connected to the Internet, or has a USB device plugged in. All the lights glow a rich blue, and you tin easily turn them all off with a switch in the back.

Along the Athena'south dorsum are the antenna connections, an input connection for a broadband modem, four gigabit LAN ports and a USB slot for plugging in a memory key or hard drive. That USB slot won't work with a networked printer, though. The device too has an on/off button, a recessed reset key and a WPS button for quickly connecting a new client or device.

Within, the Athena has a dual-cadre ane.4-GHz Qualcomm processor, 512MB of RAM and 128MB of flash storage to hold its firmware. Each antenna has 4 dedicated amplifiers, 1 for boosting the signal for incoming and outgoing traffic on each ring.

Setup Software

After screwing in the antennas and plugging in the Athena, yous'll need to connect a device to the router. Unlike OnHub, which can be configured just with an Android or iOS app, Athena tin connect to other types of devices, such as a desktop PC or a Mac.

The Athena router is i of the virtually customizable pieces of networking gear, making it a geek's dream come up true.

The router's startup wizard takes about xx seconds to scope out your Internet connexion and gives y'all the pick of changing the network's name and passwords (something you should do immediately, because the Athena uses generic network names and passwords out of the box). All told, information technology took me 5 minutes to gear up up this router.

MORE: Best Routers

Configuration

The Athena router is i of the most versatile and customizable pieces of networking gear yous can buy, making it a geek'due south dream come true. To cheque on its settings or change anything, yous need to go to the router'southward dashboard, available at the router'southward IP address or — after its initial configuration — via setup.ampedwireless.com.

In add-on to using IP Five.vi addressing (which someday nosotros'll all have to use), you tin can practice things like turn off the router'southward ii.four- or 5-GHz transmission. In other words, yous can turn it into a wired-only router for when yous continue vacation. Yous tin even prepare an access schedule for when the wireless transmissions are turned on and off.

Amped's Athena router can customize a number of different settings – everything from the Beacon Interval for determining the time betwixt beacon broadcasts to the fragmentation threshold that sets the maximum bundle size. All of this allows yous to optimize the router for how you program to use it. Different most of its competitors, the Athena allows yous to adapt its ability so you're not broadcasting past the walls of your abode. Information technology can as well use Wi-Fi Protected Setup to automatically allow devices to connect.

The Athena has the latest security software, with the power to apply anything from WEP to WPA2 encryption. It'due south besides the rare router in its class that can use a Radius server to authenticate clients, making it safe for a small business concern to utilize. It has a stateful packet inspection firewall (though, unfortunately, not a network address translation one) to assistance distinguish legitimate traffic from hackers.

One downside is that the Athena won't automatically download firmware updates equally they go available, though information technology took most 5 minutes to download and install the latest software. The router lacks the OnHub's ability to run but approved software when it'due south starting upwardly, which would forestall rogue software from taking over the device.

Over the course of two weeks, I used the Athena router to connect to a wide diversity of devices, including a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet, an elderly three-year-old MacBook Air, an iPad mini and an Android phone. The router tin can create four split up guest networks, each with different apply and access rights.

The router works with versions of Amped'south Wi-Fi Analytics Tool for Android and Windows to monitor the network; there'southward no comparable analytics tool for Mac or iOS users. The software not only scans Athena'south network for the betoken strength for each ring, but also looks for interfering networks. With some of the coolest networking graphs available for looking at throughput over time or spotting interfering channels, it's a shame that y'all tin't use information technology to make any changes to the router's settings.

Operation

The dual-ring Athena router tin theoretically push two.35 Gbps of data over the 2.iv- and 5-GHz bands. Of that, 600 Mbps flows through 2.iv-GHz transmissions, and 1.743 Gbps goes through the five-GHz section. A ane.iv-GHz Qualcomm dual-cadre processor with 512MB of RAM and 128MB of storage powers the router.

Based on Qualcomm's MU EFX line of radio fries, the Athena uses the latest beamforming techniques to conform its transmissions to suit its clients. It likewise includes MU-MIMO engineering science for when anybody at home demands bandwidth at the aforementioned time.

In real-world testing using Ixia's IxChariot software in a crowded Wi-Fi environment, the Athena router was powerful just just curt of the upper echelon of networking gear we've evaluated. It was able to movement 73.6 Mbps in ii.4-GHz mode every bit well as 329.2 Mbps in five-GHz fashion. That adds up to a total throughput of 402.8 Mbps, which is well above the category boilerplate of 348 Mbps.

The Athena's functioning trailed that of the $130 TrendNet TEW-812DRU (at a acme of 442.9 Mbps) and the $200 Netgear R7000 (at a tiptop of 444.8 Mbps), each of which costs less than the Amped Athena.

Interestingly, the Athena hit its superlative throughput when information technology was fifteen anxiety from the connected device. That differs from competing routers, which usually take the highest throughput when connecting devices are located closer to the router.

Its latency — the time it takes to go a information packet from the router to its destination and back — was a little on the loftier side, at 16 milliseconds and 4.six ms in 2.4- and 5-GHz operations, respectively. The router had skilful range; it didn't lose bear on with my Surface 3 tablet until it was 110 feet away, in a suburban home with lots of walls. That'southward well curt of the 175-foot range of its trivial brother, the RTA1750, but it should be plenty to fill about homes.

More: Google'due south Wi-Fi Router Could Make Your Home Smarter

The Athena router easily passed our saturation examination, where we play a Television bear witness on ane system while watching a flick on another and listening to Internet radio on a third. All this happens while two desktops swap a load of data. The video and audio flowed smoothly, with no stuttering or frozen frames during the exam.

Warranty

Amped Wireless' Athena comes with a one-yr warranty that seems to exist standard for routers these days. Still, that pales in comparison to the 3 years of coverage — virtually the expected technological lifetime of a router — that TrendNet provides with its routers.

Bottom Line

Amped Wireless' Athena may not be the nigh powerful router or the one with the longest range, just it's i of the virtually customizable, with a wide variety of adjustments possible for delivering peak functioning. It also has one of the best mobile apps for a Wi-Fi router in Amped's Wi-Fi Analytics Tool, which lets you monitor many important aspects of its operations, though you can't change any settings from there.

The Athena boasts both quick setup and high-gain antennas, but information technology doesn't go beyond a mediocre range of 110 feet. And its $260 toll tag is more than in line with that of flagship tri-ring routers that tin can push more than information to connected devices than this router could muster.

Specs

Wi-Fi Spec: 802.11ac/Dual Ring
Number of Antennas/Removable: 4/Yes
Ports: 4 Gbps LAN, USB 3.0
Elevation 802.11ac performance: 402.8 Mbps (at 15 anxiety)
Range: 110 feet
Size: ane.4 x 9.1 x 7.3 inches

Brian Nadel is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in applied science reporting and reviewing. He works out of the suburban New York City area and has covered topics from nuclear power plants and Wi-Fi routers to cars and tablets. The onetime editor-in-primary of Mobile Computing and Communications, Nadel is the recipient of the TransPacific Writing Award.