Review of TP-LINK’s TL-WR1043ND Wireless Router, Power Packed and Feature Rich

After writ­ing a review on Newegg.com regard­ing this router, we fig­ured it was worth men­tion­ing in our blog. It’s rare that a prod­uct catches the eye of the Guru’s. But this router stands out from the pack. With a com­bi­na­tion of low price, unmatched fea­tures, and all around func­tion­al­ity, make TP-LINK’s TL-WR1043ND wire­less router a stand­out from the pack. Typ­i­cally fea­tures found in this router are only avail­able in high dol­lar, or appli­ca­tion spe­cific routers. That cou­pled with the abil­ity to flash open source firmware’s, such as DD-WRT, opens the door to seem­ingly lim­it­less con­fig­u­ra­tions and abil­i­ties. At the time of our review, this router was sell­ing for $59.99, with free ship­ping form Newegg.com. There’s cur­rently no other router that can match this routers fea­tures and func­tion­al­ity, in both bud­get price range, and full blown gam­ing routers.

Update:
Like we said, this is an amaz­ing prod­uct. Not one day after our review of the TL-WR1043ND, it not only sells out com­pletely at Newegg.com, but the price increased $10 and ship­ping is no longer included. The router is still well worth this min­i­mally inflated price. But its makes us wish we had bought more.

——————————————————————

On a scale of one to five, we rated this router a Five. Our review reads as follows:

Pros:
This router is amaz­ing. I didn’t even bother with the fac­tory oper­at­ing sys­tem. I flashed DD-WRT as soon as I got it, and I couldn’t be hap­pier. This was an upgrade from a WRT54GL, and let me just say that if you’re even con­sid­er­ing this as a sim­i­lar upgrade, DO IT… Giga­bit Lan, I really don’t know how I lived with­out it. Plus a USB net­work share drive, or ftp server, or what­ever else you’d like to do with it. With this I was able to ditch a small file server I had run­ning as well. That’s $50 a month off my PG&E.

This router puts my old Linksys GL router to shame. The GUI, run­ning DD-WRT of course, is light­ning fast. There’s no notice­able lag or delay what­so­ever between page refreshes. At this price, and with all the included fea­tures, I really don’t ever see myself buy­ing any other router in the fore­see­able future. That’s for both me, and my clients. Bravo TP-LINK…

Cons:
ummm.… 5 year war­ranty? That’s just too long. lol… Not a one!!!!

Other Thoughts:
If you’re even con­sid­er­ing this router, BUY IT!!!! You will not be dis­ap­pointed. There’s noth­ing in this price range that even com­pares, at the time of my review. And I don’t see that chang­ing any­time soon.

———————————————————————–

Sources:

Cur­rently on sale for $59.99, with free ship­ping form Newegg.com

DD-WRT open source firmware. Warn­ing, this will void your war­ranty and can turn your router into a paper weight. Flash at your own discretion.

May 15, 2010 | Web Design | 3 Comments »