yikes.. who pooed in your cheerios...
Is this guy really that bad of a reviewer?
In my opinion, the review covered the most important stuff.
From the major brands, their web UIs and apps maintain a very uniform UX to the point where often you can't even tell the difference between an entry level WiFi 7 router and a top of the line model. It is at a point where if every review covered it, the hardest part of making the review would be coming up with different ways to word the app review section so that it doesn't look copy and pasted from every other review.
If anything I find it be be more valuable to review the app separately from the routers, and update that review separately when a major change happens.
Outside of that, for router reviews, Ideally it would be good to have an overview of certain key settings, for example, per-device service/ port blocking (becoming increasingly important given the number of devices that quickly stop receiving security updates). Sadly there are some consumer routers that lack those basic functions.
Outside of that for all in one units, the most important area of benchmarking is primarily the WiFi since modern SOCs, even at the entry level, can easily handle 1-2Gbps connections with 10GbE capable ones being able to handle the full 10Gbps if not using QOS.
The issue is that it is hard to benchmark the WAN port on most budget focused routers since often you will not have a second 10Gbps port to use.
With that in mind, the 10GbE units are almost always capable of at least handling 2Gbps connections even with some QOS.
This often leaves just the WiFi, and if there is a 10GbE port that can be used for LAN traffic, then those tests become easy and consistent, as you no longer need to spread a test out over a WiFi client communicating with multiple 2.5GbE endpoints.
If you are testing with 2.5GbE to WiFi, and a client benchmarks at around 2380Mbps for a TCP connection, then the 2.5GbE port is what is bottlenecking you.
Beyond that, when it comes to routers with a USB port, it would be good to have a basic benchmark of the read and write speeds.
All it really takes is a basic NVMe enclosure and an okay SSD.
For example, I have had good results with a cheap $17 orico nvme enclosure, and a 1TB SN770 for benchmarking, though for everyday use, I use a SATA dock and a 2TB WD blue SSD since my router struggles to sustain even 200MB/s reads and writes.
USB storage on a router is very useful even if you already have a proper NAS. For basic use such as streaming anime to your smart TV, storage on your router will handle that task with a tiny fraction of the power that a basic truenas build would use from the activity of simply streaming the video (no transcoding or anything else CPU intensive).
View: https://imgur.com/a/FfwiKbv
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