Belkin's Double N+ wireless router excels with great performance and quick speeds

The Belkin Double N+ is a beast. It measures more than a foot tall with its twin antennae extended; it boasts simultaneous dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n radios; and it has four Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The USB port on the rear can be used to serve music, video and photos from external storage via UPnP, and there's a BitTorrent client that can download five torrents at once and save them to the attached drive.

You can also set up a hotel-style guest account, which allows you to restrict visitors to internet access, shielding network resources from view.

Performance matches up with the stellar feature list. In our speed tests, the Belkin Double N+ proved the fastest of all the routers on test, with average speeds over 5GHz from router to laptop of 134Mbits/sec and 90Mbits/sec in the other direction. While reading large files, it peaked at 150Mbits/sec.

Over 2.4GHz its speeds were bettered only by the single-band Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, and its range was superb too: it was the fastest over 5GHz at long range and the second fastest over 2.4GHz.

Coupled with a reasonable price of $222, it seems hard to resist - and it passed our soak test with flying colours too. But there is a problem: although the router has a USB port that supports shared storage, the only way to access files on attached drives is to install Belkin's client software on each of your home PCs. That makes it feel like a tacked-on feature.

The ability to access files directly may be added in a future firmware update, but for now it's just enough for the Double N+ to be edged out of contention by the Linksys WRT610N.

• - Best Value -
  Buffalo's WZR-HP-G300NH is our pick for best value wireless router this month
• 
  Billion's BiPAC7300N wireless router is good value for under $150
• 
  D-Link's DSL-2740B, an impressively fast router for under $130
• 
  Linksys by Cisco WRT610N excels in dual bands with long range
• - Labs Winner -
  DrayTek's Vigor 2110n a great value wireless router that's now on our A-List
• 
  TP-LInk's TL-WR1043ND wireless router suffers from poor range, low price and no dual band
• 
  D-Link's DIR-855 wireless router suffers from poor range and sky high prices
• 
  Linksys by Cisco WAG320N lacks critical dual band function
• 
  Belkin's N+ ADSL router lacks whistles and bells, but gets job done
• 
  Netgear's WNDR3700 wireless router has the speed, but lacks the range
• 
  Netgear's DGND3300 ADSL router is let down by poor performance