Totolink A2004NS AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router review: An affordable router for advanced users

Being the first router from Totolink I've reviewed, the A2004NS AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router made quite an interesting impression.

7.0

Totolink A2004NS AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

The Good

The Totolink A2004NS AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router has decent Wi-Fi performance, a practical design, and an affordable price.

The Bad

Its Web interface is not intuitive enough for home users, and the setup doesn't help you avoid wireless settings that will cause interference and poor performance in your home country. The router supports only the dual-stream version of the fastest Wi-Fi standards, rather than the speediest three-stream alternative.

The Bottom Line

So long as you're not a networking newbie, the Totolink A2004NS AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router is a good deal for those living in a small or medium home.

Hailing from South Korea, the router matches its petite and somewhat exotic appearance with modest internal hardware, supporting just the midtier dual-stream (2x2) setup of the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. (In other words, you'll get the fastest Wi-Fi standard, but with just midtier bandwidth.) In my testing, it turned out to be potentially a great router for most home users, offering just what they need at a very affordable cost.

However, there is a bit of a catch: you need to be willing to spend some time configuring it properly, because the router includes Wi-Fi settings that are not intended for certain countries. And unfortunately, its interface is far from the best I've seen. Once properly set up, however, the router's $90 USD price is money well spent. (Availability and pricing in the UK and Australia are not available at this time, but its US price converts to around £54 and AU$96 at the current exchange rate.)

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For some more expensive but also faster and more user-friendly options, however, check out this list of the top 802.11ac routers on the market.

Compact and practical design

The A2004NS has an attractive look that's different from most routers I've seen. It's a squarish box measuring 7.2 x 5.25 x 1 inches (182.5 x 133.5 x 26 mm). On top, toward one of its sides, there are four antennas that stand up for use or can be folded down when not needed. Also on top but close to the edge is an array of tiny LEDs that show the status of the router's power and its ports.

All of its ports (including four Gigabit LAN ports, one Gigabit WAN port, and one USB 2.0 port) are located on the side opposite the antenna. This design makes it hard to determine the front or back side of the router. But in the end it doesn't matter; the router looks good however you place it, and it's convenient to use.

No so user-friendly

The A2004NS is not a router for the novice user. It comes with a CD containing setup software, which walks you through a few simple steps of hardware setup, such as connecting it to a broadband modem and powering it on. (Alas, despite the fact that fewer and fewer PCs have optical drives, the software does not seem to be available for download on Totolink's website.) After that, the software helps launch the router's Web interface for further setup.

You can skip the software entirely and get right to its interface by pointing a connected computer's browser to the router's default IP -- which is 192.168.1.1 -- and log in by using admin as both the user name and password. Once logged in, if you're familiar with home routers' interfaces (or have read this CNET How To story) you'll be able to figure things out. For first-time users, however, working with the router's interface can be a daunting experience.

The interface itself is organized in the traditional granular menus that are divided into different sections that belong to two main parts, Basics and Advanced. However, I found that in the Advanced portion, the sheer number of sections and sub-items could be very intimidating to a nonsavvy user. To make matters worse, the interface uses different acronyms and networking terms from those commonly found in other routers.

There are wizards that make things a bit easier, but I found that following the wireless wizard, which helps set up the router's two Wi-Fi networks, could render the router useless, at least in the US. This is because the router includes settings that are not intended for this market.

Invalid Wi-Fi channels

As a product made for multiple markets, the A2004NS supports all existing Wi-Fi channels. However, per regulations, in some regions, only certain channels are allowed. For example, on the 5GHz frequency band, in the States, generally only channels 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, 161, and 165 are available for home Wi-Fi routers. Yet when set to operate in this market, the A2004NS still allows you to select all other channels, such as channels 60, 64, 100, and so on. To make matters worse, when I used the wizard to pick the "best channel," a tool that basically suggests a channel that's currently not -- or minimally -- used by other routers or access points in the vicinity, it always picked a channel that is not allowed in the region (which explains why it's not being used by any other devices). Picking an invalid channel will lead to all sorts of connection problems, including making the router itself useless as a wireless signal broadcaster, since most clients won't be able to see or connect to its Wi-Fi network.

That said, it's important that you manually pick one of the allowed channels in your region for each of the bands. (For the 2.4GHz band, in the US, the allowed channels range from 1 to 11.)

Nice feature set, not-so-fun to configure

Other than that, the A2004NS has a common set of features found in other routers, such as QoS, port forwarding, Firewall, Dynamic DNS, and so on. It can even work as a VPN server, which is a feature usually available only in high-end routers. However, it can be quite time-consuming to configure certain features and settings.

For example, the router shows the

Another example is the USB port, which can host an external hard drive and share its storage with the rest of the network. But there are quite a few steps before you can share the drive's contents, and you must create accounts for other computers to access the shared folders.

In all, you'll find that you'll get most, if not all, of what you want from a home router with the A2004NS. However, getting everything to work the way you want might take longer than it would with other routers.

Performance

The A2004NS is a true dual-band router that supports only the dual-stream setup of both 802.11ac and 802.11n Wi-Fi standards, rather than their maximum three-stream bandwidth options. (Check out the section on spatial streams in our networking guide for more info.) That means that, on the 5GHz bands, it can deliver up to 867Mbps when working with 802.11ac clients or up to 300Mbps when working with 802.11n clients. On the 2.4GHz band, it can handle up to 300Mbps at most.

I tested the Totolink router on both bands, and it did quite well. On the 5GHz band at close range, it registered a sustained data speed of 128Mbps. When I increased the range to 100 feet, it scored 98Mbps.

On the 2.4GHz band, it average 77Mbps and 38Mbps at close range and long range, respectively.

These numbers obviously were nowhere close to those of higher-end routers, but for most homes with casual wireless networking needs, they are fast enough. You'll have no problem sharing the Internet or streaming online content as long as you don't get too far away from the router. In my trial, the router had an effective range of around 140 feet with the 5GHz band and about 175 feet using the 2.4GHz band.

The router passed our 48-hour stress test with no problem at all. During this time it was set to transfer data back and forth among multiple clients, and none was disconnected, even once. Note that I tested the router at CNET's offices, where there are walls and many Wi-Fi devices that are out of my control. Generally, walls shorten the reach of a Wi-Fi signal, and other Wi-Fi devices create interference. As with all Wi-Fi routers, your results may vary depending on where you live.

I tried the router with a few portable drives, but its performance was mediocre at best. Via a Gigabit connection, it registered less than 1MBps for both writing and reading. This means you should just use the A2004NS as a pure Wi-Fi router and not as a network storage server.

Conclusion

The Totolink A2004NS is an 802.11ac router that's just slightly better than a good N600 router, but it costs about the same. Personally, I find its practical design is enough to make up for its unintuitive Web interface, which is an issue only for those who don't want to spend the time needed to configure it properly. Networking beginners should steer clear, but if you're willing to take the time to set it up, and you're in the market for a simple, reliable router for a small or medium home, the A2004NS is a great deal.