Western Digital My Net N900 HD router review

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Features, Product Reviews

We've been testing the recently-released Western Digital My Net N900, a router released by the company most known for its hard drives. This isn't just any router though--it's supposed to make QoS setup quick and easy for the every man. With a few clicks, Western Digital says that you'll have an optimized home network that'll make sure the important data doesn't get hindered by background tasks that aren't as high on the totem pole of priority. Does the My Net N900 live up to that promise? Join us after the break for our full My Net N900 review to find out.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS

When you take the My Net N900 out of the box, you notice two things. One, it's kinda big. Not huge or anything, but certainly wider than a lot of the other routers we test. However, it makes great use of the space that it takes up, sporting a slim design. The fact that it packs in seven Gigabit Ethernet ports explains its width, and makes it more than excuseable. For those of you with wired Ethernet in your homes, you may be able to ditch the multi-port switch that you've had connected to other routers that typically top out at four Ethernet ports.

Second, it looks great. The size isn't a deterrent at all and this thing isn't an eyesore by any means. It actually loks nice and modern without trying to go the futuristic route that other router manufacturers have been going for lately (see our Belkin N900 router review.)

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USING THE WESTERN DIGITAL MY NET N900 HD
As we said previously, the router aims to make it easy to set up your network so that high priority data (streaming video, games, VoIP, etc.) stays consistent and strong while lower priority events (file transfers, downloads) still get bandwidth without hogging it all up, thanks to its FasTrack technology. It does that job swimmingly. One thing we noticed, though, was that we had to manually enter our upload speed because the auto-calculated figure was way off base. Once we did that, everything worked as expected.

The extra Gigabit Ethernet ports were more than appreciated, and we were able to get six different rooms all plugged directly into the router without the need for a Gigabit switch to sit in the middle.

The router also has two USB 2.0 ports that you can plug external hard drives into if you'd like to create a network storage drive or two. It's got guest network abilities as well, over both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. 802.11ac is missing here, but there aren't really any non-router Wi-Fi devices that support the standard anyway, and we'd bet that once there are that Western Digital will release an updated model supporting it. That said, if you're hoping to futureproof yourself, this might not be the router for you.

FINAL VERDICT
The Western Digital My Net N900 HD is a great router, even with the $180 price tag. We've experience far less router 'hiccups' while using it than we did with the last two Cisco and Belkin routers we tested. It's a quality piece of hardware with the pricetag to match, and it most certainly gets the job done as advertised and expected. You can pick up the My Net N900 HD on Amazon.