Trendnet TEW-805UB review: Low-priced adapter delivers lackluster performance and features

The Trendnet TEW-805UB’s best features are its size and its price tag, both of which are small. It will protrude from your computer’s USB port by about 2.625 inches, and it’s street-priced at only $40. But it brings up the rear in most every other metric. It doesn’t have any special features, and in my roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters, it finished fourth in one test location and dead last in the other three.

The adapter is short, and it comes with a USB 3.0 interface, but that interface isn’t hinged and Trendnet doesn’t provide a USB cradle. Those decisions leave very little placement flexibility. The TEW-805UB’s close-range performance was merely adequate. Whereas the top-performing Asus USB-AC56 delivered TCP throughput of 404 megabits per second when situated 9 feet from the router, the Trendnet managed just 256 mbps. Still, that’s good enough to beat the Buffalo WI-U2-866 (240 mbps) and the Linksys WUSB6300 (230 mbps).

As relatively slow as the Trendnet TEW-805UB is, it should still be fast enough to stream HD video just about anywhere in your home. (Click to enlarge.)

In the other three test locations, Trendnet’s adapter trailed the field by wide margins. It was the only one of the six models that couldn’t muster a triple-digit performance when the client was at its farthest point from the router—65 feet away—and it only barely achieved that when the client was in my home theater, 35 feet away. When the client was in the kitchen, the TEW-805UB was 33 mbps slower than the fifth-place finisher, the Linksys WUSB6300. While it proved to be 26 mbps faster in the bedroom than the WUSB6300, which finished last there, it was 148 mbps slower than the first-place finisher (the Asus USB-AC56).

If your 802.11ac Wi-Fi budget is limited to $40, Buffalo’s WI-U2-866D is the far better buy. If you can stretch it just $10 more, D-Link’s DWA-182 will deliver even higher performance. There’s very little reason to buy Trendnet’s TEW-805UB.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters. For more, read the introduction to the roundup.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Trendnet TEW-812DRU V2 router review: Barely the basics

TRENDnet TEW-812DRU AC1750 Wireless Router $210.00 There's very little reason to consider the Trendnet's TEW-812DRU Wi-Fi router. It's nearly devoid of advanced features, it's performance is below par on most counts, and it's not the least-expensive model

Street-priced at $135, Trendnet’s TEW-812DRU V2 is one of the least expensive 802.11ac routers on the market. But its performance leaves much to be desired, and it's virtually bereft of advanced features beyond its support for 802.11ac.

Well, that might be a little harsh. You can establish up to three guest networks with two options: Allowing guests full network access or restricting them to the Internet, and allowing them to interact on the network or isolating them from each other. Like D-Link’s DIR-868L, Trendnet’s TEW-812DRU V2 has a single USB 3.0 port that can be used to share storage or a printer.

ROBERT CARDIN

The Trendnet TEW-DRU812 V2 is one of the least-expensive 802.11ac routers on the market—with good reason.

And unlike Buffalo’s WZR-1750DHP, the Trendnet’s router recognizes drives formatted NTFS. Or at least some drives. For whatever reason, it wouldn’t recognize the WD My Passport drive I use for measuring NAS file-transfer performance. It did recognize a different WD My Passport, but since the TEW-812DRU happened to be the last drive I tested, I wasn’t about to go back and retest the rest of the field with that other drive, so I skipped that benchmark with this router.

Aside from those features, the TEW-812DRU V2 is as bare-bones a router as I’ve seen. Parental controls? Basic. VPN server? No. BitTorrent client? No. Cloud services? No. iTunes server? Heck, this router doesn’t have a DLNA server! It does have UPnP, FTP, and Samba servers—but once again, those are basic features that any router should have.

The TEW-812DRU V2’s routers are hidden inside its vertically oriented enclosure, and that design decision likely contributed to this router’s poor performance compared to the other five routers I tested.

ROBERT CARDIN

The TEW-812DRU V2 seems to be finicky about which USB hard drives it will recognize. 

The Trendnet TEW-812DRU V2 is a router and nothing more. It can’t be converted to operate as a Wi-Fi access point, and you can’t turn it into an 802.11ac wireless bridge. Like most of its competitors, it doesn’t offer TurboQAM on its 802.11n network, either, but that’s not a significant shortcoming. It finished in the back of the pack in most of my TCP throughput tests.

As I’ve already mentioned, you can’t convert the TEW-812DRU V2 into an 802.11ac wireless bridge, so I couldn’t test it in that scenario.

Trendet’s router finished dead last when paired with a Linksys WUMC710 802.11ac Wi-Fi bridge. It was the only router that couldn’t break 200 mbps when the client was in my home theater, or 300 mbps when the client was in my home office.

The TEW-812DRU V2 delivered an outstanding performance when linked to a client outfitted with a Linksys WUSB6300 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter, but only at very close range when the two devices were in the same room.

The Trendnet’s 5GHz 802.11n network performed much better. While it finished in fifth place in the field of six, it wasn’t that far behind the D-Link DIR-868L, which finished first.

This router turned in average performances on its 2.4GHz 802.11n network when the client was at close range, but its performance went off a cliff when I moved the client to my home theater and then my home office.

The TEW-812DRU V2 wouldn’t recognize the WD My Passport USB 3.0 hard drive that I use for benchmarking network-attached storage performance. Oddly enough, it did recognize an older WD My Passport drive. To be fair to the other manufacturers, I would have had to retest all the other routers with this model, so I decided not to spend the time to benchmark Trendnet’s.

There’s little to recommend the TEW-812DRU V2 beyond its low price tag. Buffalo’s WZR-1750DHP was $5 cheaper, and it has more features and delivered higher performance on most of my benchmarks. Trendnet is the better choice over Buffalo if  you want a cheap router that can share a USB storage device. Then again, if you can squeeze another $15 out of your budget, D-Link’s DIR-868L delivers a full set of features and performance that’s leagues beyond both the Buffalo and Trendnet routers.

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Trendnet SecurView Pro Outdoor PoE Megapixel IP Camera Review: As Complex as It Is Powerful

TRENDnet's TV-IP322P is a pro-grade surveillance camera that delivers amazing resolution and long-distance night vision. Whereas Logitech (with its Alert 750e Outdoor Master System) and Swann (with its DVR-4 2600 4 Channel DVR & Camera Kit) emphasize ease of use, Trendnet focuses on delivering maximum performance and flexibility. Instead of making all of the design decisions for you, Trendnet assumes that you know exactly what you need, and the company provides the building blocks you need in order to realize your vision. The upside of this approach is that you get exactly what you want in a video-surveillance system and can expand it as your needs grow. The downside is that you must know precisely what you want and how to put it all together.

Adopting this à la carte method, we put together a four-camera system anchored by Trendnet's best outdoor night-vision IP camera (the TV-IP322P, $578) and supplemented with two indoor night-vision cameras (Trendnet model TV-IP121WN, $165 each), one indoor tilt/swivel night-vision camera (Trendnet model TV-IP422WN, $300), and Trendnet's SecurView Pro software (a copy of which is included with each camera).

Each of the four cameras can operate using a single cable: The wireless cameras need only a power cord, and the TV-IP322P can operate on power-over-ethernet (PoE), so you don't need an electrical outlet near where you deploy it (Trendnet supplies an AC power adapter, in case you don't want to deploy a PoE switch). We tested the setup with Trendnet's eight-port PoE switch (model TPE-S80, $218). This five-piece package would cost $1426--slightly more than Logitech's surveillance system and considerably more than Swann's--but it delivers excellent service, it's extremely versatile, and it can be upgraded to support as many as 32 cameras (including eight PoE devices; you can deploy more PoE cameras with a larger PoE switch).

Networking

Unlike the Logitech and Swann systems we reviewed, most of Trendnet's cameras rely on a host PC running on your network to store recorded video (the TV-IP322P is equipped with a high-capacity SD Card slot and can support up to 32GB of local memory, though Trendnet doesn't put any memory cards in the box). Swann's system comes with its own DVR, and Logitech's cameras can run independently of the PC, recording video to their onboard memory while the host PC is sleeping. Unless every camera in your setup has onboard memory, as the TV-IP322P does, the system must run Trendnet's SecurView Pro software nonstop.

Add a Trendnet camera with pan/tilt capabilities, and you can monitor an entire room using your mouse and this control panel.The SecurView Pro software can support any of Trendnet's comprehensive collection of IP cameras, regardless of their resolution and feature set. The model TV-IP322P camera, for instance, boasts a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. In contrast, the other Trendnet models and the Swann cameras we tested have a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, and the Logitech Alert cameras deliver video resolution of 960 by 720 pixels. Check a box in the SecurView Pro software's user interface, and the program will automatically scale each camera's video window to maintain the appropriate aspect ratio. Check another box, and the software will offer a pop-up window for controlling features specific to each camera, such as pan/tilt or audio recording.

The Cameras

Trendet's TV-IP322P is one of the most impressive IP cameras we've seen to date, thanks in large measure to its detailed resolution, strong night-vision capabilities (working at distances of up to 66 feet), industrial-strength housing, and comprehensive connectivity features. In addition to its PoE support, the TV-IP322P can support two-way audio with ports for an external mic and speaker, for video intercom configurations. It has general-purpose input/output ports for integration into an alarm system, it can generate email alerts, and it can stream real-time video to a smartphone--with support for h.264, MPEG-4, and MJPEG compression algorithms--all without requiring a host PC.

The TV-IP322P has a very strong night-vision capability, but other Trendnet cameras we reviewed are weak in this regard. The camera is protected by an IP66-rated weather- and vandal-proof enclosure. An enclosure's IP rating (the acronym stands for "ingress protection") represents its ability to protect against solid objects (indicated by the first digit) and liquids (indicated by the second digit). An IP rating of 66 means that the enclosure will prevent any dust from getting inside, and will protect against high-pressure water potentially entering at the enclosure from any direction.

The indoor Trendnet cameras we tested--models TV-IP121WN and TV- TV-IP422WN--delivered very good daylight performance, but their night vision was weak compared to Logitech's Alert cameras, Swann's Pro 580 cameras, and Trendnet's own TV-IP322P outdoor camera. Factor in the host PC and Trendnet's software, and any of Trendnet's cameras can produce motion-triggered video recordings, generate email and SMS alerts, and perform all the other functions you'd expect of a high-end video-surveillance system.

The Bottom Line

Trendnet's TV-IP322P is a big-ticket camera, but its high resolution and expansive feature set justify its high price tag. The SecurView Pro software that controls it is equally powerful and can support up to 32 cameras, but the software is also complex and difficult to master.

The other two Trendnet cameras--the TV-IP121WN and the TV-IP422WN--are merely adequate: Their night vision is weak, and their resolution equals that of Swann's analog cameras. But when you put the pan/tilt model into "patrol" mode, the camera automatically pans and tilts in accordance with a predefined pattern to cover more area than either Logitech's or Swann's models.

Building a facility-wide IP camera system using only Trendnet's TV-IP322P cameras would be prohibitively expensive, especially if you don't need an outdoor camera in every location. Trendnet recently announced an entirely new line of indoor IP cameras, and we'll take a look at those as soon as Trendnet sends us evaluation units.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of video surveillance systems. For more, read our introduction to the roundup.

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