EnGenius ESR9855G Wireless-N Gaming Router - Game On
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Conclusion
The Final Word
Judging by its aesthetics alone, the humble EnGenius ESR9855G isn't as attractive as some of its competitors' prettier 802.11n rivals. Furthermore, this EnGenius wireless router has a number of inadequacies such as a missing USB port and dual-band functionality. These aren't life-saving features, but they're nonetheless important if you require a router for network printing or sharing of USB storage devices. Dual-band on the other hand, is overrated if you aren't a heavy recipient of media streaming on your home network, so it really boils down to your networking needs. Moreover, we believe a true blue gamer would prefer a wired Ethernet connection rather than rely on a finicky and interference-prone Wi-Fi link.
As much as these deficits are apparent, they not entirely critical as the ESR9855G has a number of redeeming traits to mitigate its shortfalls. For one, the ESR9855G has a substantial list of functions available on its UI such as port forwarding, SPI firewall, and virtual server options, to name a few. Not to mention a combination of prioritization features such as StreamEngine, which is a welcome additive for gamers anticipating minimal lags whilst taking out Zerg swarms in Starcraft II. Based on our test figures, the EnGenius router's wireless performance was stable and healthy at close proximities, but started to develop its share of quirks at 10 meters and beyond, mainly on its uplink pipe. Securing the router did dent its speeds by quite a fair bit as well, unfortunately. Although its long range prowess wasn't too impressive, we didn't encounter any connection drops throughout our tests - yes, even at the 25-meter range. All in all, we think EnGenius' S$189 shelf tag is justifiable, given the router's base features and how it eventually panned out. You might want to pass on the ESR9855G if you're bent on a dual-band solution. But if its single 2.4GHz radio and said functions sound good enough, then by all means, game on with it.
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