Gadgetory

hi and welcome to hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and today I'll be taking you on a tour through some knowledge ease RT 1980 router Synology are best known for their network attached storage devices but now looking to break into the other side of the networking market with their new RT 1980 router at first glance it's certainly nothing remarkable in fact it looks pretty much like every other router made in the last 10 years but as they say in the router game it's what's on the inside that counts thankfully Synology didn't just set all to pump out another clean router with the clunky ugly and hives used interface and attempt to purely compete on price hardware wise it's up to all the latest home router standards including dual channel wireless AC boosting up to 1.9 gigabit combined throughput along with the technologies like beamforming that it brings there's four Gigabit LAN ports a WPS button and a Wi-Fi on/off switch LED indicators that you can schedule to switch off at night and something else a little different a USB 3 port and an SD card slot that provide nasa-like capabilities which really set this router apart so Knology has also looked to take it to user friendliness software and adapt it to the RT 1980 and personally I think they've done a great job the best way to give you guys an understanding of the UI is to take you on a personal tour so strap yourselves in we're going to 192.168.1.1 land the physical setup is straightforward screwing the three Wi-Fi antennas plug in the power and when cables and press the power button you should be good to go the next step is simply head to router Dotson ology comm and you should be met with this installation wizard follow the simple step-by-step process and fill in your particulars and you should be ready to go you can configure all of your Wi-Fi security and other network settings here in the network Center where the common settings are easy enough to find yeah power users can still set up wireless access points in bridge mode only allow specific MAC addresses to it the network and you can even set up a 3G or 4G dongle if you don't have wired Internet access in the parental control section you can block certain devices from accessing the Internet during set hours allow you to block your kids access during homework hours for example and you can also block your kids devices access to specific websites such as Facebook including even the mobile app you can even configure application layer QoS optimization I mean you can assign how much bandwidth the device can consume when it's using a specific application for instance YouTube on your child's iPad or similar remote access to manage your router and the devices connected to it can be configured in the internet section and Synology provides an optional Quick Connect ID service to make it simple the status tab is attractive and useful displaying real time speeds connected devices and CPU and memory usage if you want to know which device or application is using the most damn width you can use the monitor under traffic control to view and record these statistics the administration section is where you can schedule that IDs to turn off at night time which is particularly useful if you sleep in the same room as the router and you can set up email SMS or even push service notifications which connect to the das router iOS and Android apps in the notification section security wise there's everything you'd expect from a router in this price range WEP all varieties of WPA guest network capabilities custom firewall dus protection IP auto block and custom certification there's also a security adviser that does things like scan for malicious programs and weak passwords and let you know of any security warnings now for the nats lock features that really set this router apart you can connect an external hard drive or plug in an SD card and access the files on it anytime and from anywhere with an internet connection from windows or a Mac computer you can also of course stream videos music or images to any DLNA or UPnP devices like a smart TV and even configure which users can access certain folders on the storage devices wake-on-lan is also supported finally the IT 1980 takes care of all your server needs you can enable an FTP server to remotely download large files search for download torrent files using the download station function plug in a USB printer and have it act as a network printer and you can even set up a VPN server DNS server or radius server directly on the router which is great for small and medium businesses so as you can see the RT 1980 is certainly feature-rich and sonali just done a fantastic job of making the software attractive easy to use and powerful however wise there's not much to complain about however I think it would have been great if there have been at least two USB 3 ports if those who want to connect either a printer and a hard drive or multiple hard drives were yet to get a solid MSRP but I think the RT 1980 you provide pretty good valued around $200 when the pricing information does come out I'll be sure to update the video description below thanks for watching another hardware unboxed week review if you have any questions be sure to head over to our forum at harbor and box comm don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you next time