Sitecom WL-306 300N XR review

Sitecom isn't a name that means much over here but, elsewhere, this Dutch manufacturer has a following and a wide of range of network products to match.

Sitecom's 300N Gigabit Router XR, to use its more friendly name, is a rather anodyne-looking device with no distinguishing features apart from a trio of antennae at the rear - apart from its name, its only embellishment is the WPS push-button on the top. Its seven status LEDs are located inside and glow out dimly through the unlabelled casing, which is a little daft.

The Sitecom WL-306 is very much a run-of-the-mill device with a standard draft-n feature list. It's a four-port gigabit router, certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance for the 802.11b, g and n wireless standards and operates in the 2.4GHz band. It's reasonably easy to set up, although the setup guide is wildly optimistic of the simplicity of such a task.

To its credit, the Sitecom WL-306 comes with a 10-year warranty. It also claims to save energy (‘up to 70 percent') but, as the PSU pulls just 150mA, this laudable claim won't translate into piles of money saved. When we tested it, the Sitecom WL-306 managed a fairly consistent 54 megabits per second (Mbps) of throughput. A year ago this would have been a very good draft-n speed; today, it's a pretty middling performance.