BT Home Hub offers dual-band Wi-Fi, fits through your door

There's a new hub in town: the BT Home Hub 4 is a dual-band router designed to speed up your BT Broadband or super-fast BT Infinity Internet connection.

The new Home Hub 4 has dual-band MIMO support, allowing you to wirelessly connect your phones, tablets and other devices via Wi-Fi on both the 2.5GHz and 5GHz bands at the same time, at speeds of up to 300Mbps.

2.5GHz and 5GHz are different flavours of Wi-Fi. 5GHz has a shorter range and can't penetrate walls as well, but there are other advantages.

Fewer devices can access 5GHz, but that's not such a bad thing. Newer phones and tablets such as the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S4 or the iPad work on the 5GHz frequency, while other devices like the Amazon Kindle can't. But the upside to this is that the 5GHz band is less congested, so can get better speeds -- especially if you live in a block of flats or in any environment where there's lots of Wi-Fi networks competing for precious bits and bytes.

So the new BT Home Hub gets the best of both worlds. By comparison, the Virgin Media Superhub supports either 2.5GHz or 5GHz bands, but not at the same time.

The BT Home Hub 4 is easier to get started than current models: not only does the new Hub not require a CD to set it up, but the flat, slimline shape -- replacing the current curved design -- means the box fits through your letterbox, saving you a red card and a trip to the Post Office depot when it first turns up.

New customers now get the Home Hub 4 when they sign up, or if you're already a BT customer you can upgrade in June for £35.