Edimax BR-6574N review

The BR-6574N hails from the Taiwan-based Edimax Technology. This company isn't as well known as D-Link or Linksys, but it can hold a candle to them in terms of product range and how long the company has been going.

The Edimax BR-6574N is visually identical to other Edimax routers we've looked at - it's a smart-looking glossy white device with a trio of detachable mulitple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antennae. The status LED panel is a bit on the small side but otherwise the router is attractive. You can stand it up vertically, too.

It's a single radio, 2.4GHz draft-n device, carrying Wi-Fi certification for the 802.11b, g and n standards. In common with most of its rivals it has four gigabit switched network ports and supports such useful features as Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) and Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM). The Edimax BR-6574N also offers a wide range of network options to optimise network traffic for specific applications or to set it up as a virtual server.

The Edimax BR-6574N has a good specification, but nothing exceptional. Pleasingly, Edimax includes a companion draft-n USB network adaptor in the box, however.

The Edimax BR-6574N is easy to set up, thanks to its Quick Installation Guide and intuitive web interface. An EZmax setup wizard will also help you on your way.

In our tests, the Edimax BR-6574N managed a variable data throughput that averaged out to 50 megabits per second (Mbps), according to open-source network performance tool Iperf. Like many other draft-n routers, this sort of throughput is now par for the draft-n course and other implementations of the standard can outperform it.