PC World Australia (online)
08/06/11
The Fritz!Box 7390 ADSL2+ modem/router is a little more advanced than the Fritz!Box 7270 that we reviewed at the start of the year. It has internal Wi-Fi antennas and supports Gigabit Ethernet in addition to many other great features. It's one of the best all-in-one networking devices on the market, and possibly a perfect device for a networking enthusiast who wants to know every little intricate detail about their Internet connection and local network.
The Fritz!Box 7390 will dazzle you with the huge array of features that it offers. It's definitely a model that will please enthusiast users, but also consumers who want a no-fuss set-up for their home networking needs. It's better than the 7270 entry model that we reviewed earlier this year, as it adds Gigabit Ethernet and simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi.
The Fritz!Box 7390 works with (and is available for) any ISP (we used it with iiNet) but it was originally offered by Internode. If you're in the market for an all-in-one device, it's well worth a look. It's a unit that has just about every home networking function under the sun: it's an ADSL2+ modem/router, a 4-port Gigabit switch, an 802.11n wireless access point with simultaneous dual-band support, a VoIP base for DECT phones, an ATA for analogue phones, and it can even be used to share a USB hard drive or printer. And there's plenty more, too, such as VPN support, parental settings, comprehensive call features, traffic monitoring and extensive logging.
Setting up the Fritz!Box 7390 for Internet and wireless usage isn't difficult thanks to the included wizards in its Web interface — we were up and running within a few minutes to start our tests. Both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless networks can be set up to run simultaneously, but security for them has to be enabled from a different page, and you have to use the same password for both networks. In our tests, the wireless performance of the 7390 was on par with the 7270, but it produced slightly better results than the 7270 from 10m away.
Using the 2.4GHz radio, the Fritz!Box 7390 recorded a rate of 7.78 megabytes per second (MBps) from 2m away and 6.8MBps from 10m away. Using 5GHz, it recorded 9.8MBps from 2m away and 7.78MBps from 10m away. Simultaneously transferring data from 2m using the 5GHz network recorded 9.18MBps while media was being streamed on the 2.4GHz network. The 5GHz network seems to give better performance overall and we recommend using it wherever possible, especially if you live in a large apartment block that has many 2.4GHz networks surrounding your own network.
We had no problems at all wirelessly streaming HD video from a laptop to an A.C Ryan Playon!HD2 media streamer and the Fritz!Box proved to be reliable throughout our tests. A USB port on the rear of the router allows a hard drive to be plugged in and shared across the local network (or even made accessible over the Internet). Because the router supports UPnP, a media streamer will see the attached storage device and will be able to play files off it directly (of course you could also browse to its network location).
UPnP helps when forwarding ports, too, as some applications can add their rules to the router automatically. If you want to forward ports manually, then you will have to look for the setting called Permit Access under the Internet section of the Web interface. From here you can also configure remote access, dynamic DNS settings, and VPN settings (a link is provided to a Web resource that contains step-by-step guides on how to set up VPN on the router).
The Fritz!Box 7390's NAS features aren't as extensive as the ones found on some other high-end routers, such as Netgear's N600. As an example, you can't create folders and add users through the router, but you can password protect drive a drive and make it read only. One thing that puzzled us was the lack of an English interface when we navigated to the drive through our A.C Ryan media streamer. The main folders were still in German and we had to navigate through each one to find our content. A firmware upgrade wasn't available to fix this, but as our review model wasn't a shipping version, it's probably something that has been fixed by now.
If you want to use IPTV, such as the FetchTV service, then you'll be pleased to know that the Fritz!Box 7390 is optimised to carry this traffic. There is even a graph that you can view to see how much bandwidth is being consumed by IPTV relative to the rest of your ADSL2+ connection. That's only one of the monitoring tools available in the router.
1
One of the most unrelaible modem/Router I have owned. Support was useless. Constant crashing and rebooting. The store I got it from said it was the 6th they have had returned in 3 months for same reason. (Then why the hell you still selling them?)
Spent $80 on a netgear and hasn't missed a beat.
2
Fantastic!
The best home modem on the market!
Loads of functionalities. I dont know what the other are saying about it...
I have never had a problem on mine. All you have to do is simply keep it up to date.
3
I must say that the functionality of what the FritzBox can do is great; however its reliability is appalling as I have had 2 faulty units in the past 5.5 months.
The download speed for the first unit was for some reason capped at 2mbs and could not connect to the internet after 2 months of light usage. My internet provider confirms that the unit was indeed faulty since dispatch.
I contacted FritzBox and they proved to be extremely useless - the guy simply ignored the issues I experienced and kept ramming down my throat that Fritz Box never breaks down and that it's all my fault for having a faulty product (what the??). The support is non-existent and used-car salesman like - I never expected to pay $350 to have someone based in sub-continent telling me it's my fault. Needless to say, the guy never solved the problem or recommended any resolution.
Luckily the people I bought the unit from was kind enough to offer a replacement without even testing it (they probably knew all the FritzBox issues)
The second unit flared a little bit better and I was consistently getting 6mbs (via Internode) but it died completely after 3.5 months... ka-boom for no apparent reason.
I must say though that if I have to choose between features and reliability, I'd go for reliability any time!!! Rest assured my next router will be a reputable brand and not a FritzBox!
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