Seagate Ext HDD + 600 MBPS router is enough for wireless media streaming ?

[priyabrata_chak]

I've a seagate external hdd (500 gb) and have got all my media on it.
I am looking to buy a new router which will allow me to stream media from my laptop and phone.

My laptop is old and supports only upto wireless-N and not the latest AC and same is the case with my BB Q5.

I've short listed three routers :

i) Asus RT-N 18U 2.4ghz N600 High Power Wireless Route

ii) Asus RT-N56U Dual-Band Wireless N600 Gigabit Router

iii) Netgear WNDR4300 N750

All my devices work on the 2.4 GHz and NOT the 5 GHz.

So, considering all these factors, what is the right choice for me ?

 

[bill001g]

They will likely all be about the same. The netgear router only gets 300m on the 2.4g band just like the rest so being able to run at 450m on 5g is not advantage over the other 2.

To get the best performance you will likely have to lock the router into 20mhz mode. This will force it to use only a single channel (rather than 2). This increases your odds of finding one that does not have 50 neighbors using it. This also means it caps the top speed at 150. Still 150 that has little interference will outperform a 300m signal that has lots of interference.

Both Asus and netgear make good products and have good support. That really is the main difference between routers. Inside almost all use chips from companies like broadcom or marvel. In many cases they use exactly the same chips.

If you had been asking about say belkin or zoom or some other low end manufacture you might see some difference. Mostly they do not fix bugs as quickly but even these have routers that work well.

I suspect your choice is going to come down to personal preference. Which has software features that you like better, do you need parental controls or firewall or qos. None of that matter for your application though since all you need is the ability to quickly transfer data from a ethernet port to wireless and they will all perform about the same.