Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service gaming routers maybe the first time you've ever heard that term in the past most gamers preferred using wired solutions since they offer the highest most consistent bandwidth and stability however with five gigahertz AC Wi-Fi slowly starting to become popular these days companies have begun to take advantage of this technology to make it even faster and more reliable in addition with new features like mu-mimo being implemented these routers are quickly becoming the multi-user access hubs today's users looking for implementing Iban with wireless solutions for multiple devices can Wireless finally hope to match wired that's exactly what as rocks new g10 gaming router hopes to achieve despite being known for their affordable motherboards asrock is shooting for the stars with their first router not only does the g10 have more features that most users will actually utilize but its price will likely be staggering or some $250 that puts it in the line with some of the best alternatives from the likes of Asus Linksys and Netgear but if you're considering a faster router anyways there are a few nifty atoms that as Rob brings to the table with the g10 so let's check it out from a physical perspective as Rob designed the g10 to look a little aggressive with these angular lines pointing in and out the glossy plastic finish on the body does look quite good plus it blends in perfectly within a gaming setup or a living room unfortunately the g10 can only be placed in a vertical orientation so you won't be able to hang this on the wall or tuck it safely beneath other components it takes up a lot of vertical space as well chose this orientation since the 8 internal antennas are strategically placed around the housing so blocking them could jeopardize speeds and the range within your household there's a large yet basic LED indicator on the top to indicate the router status it blinks at different colors and speeds to indicate various functions or errors I'm not sure why azrog decides to go with a one LED tells everything approach rather than using a clear LED panel so now let's talk specs this is a dual band router with a single 2.4 gigahertz and five bigger expands with full 802 11 a B G and an AC support theoretically the figureheads band should be able to push 1700 megabits per second when the 2.4 gigahertz band should be good for 800 megabits per second it has a dual-core Qualcomm processor with 512 megabytes of RAM that can easily manage those 8 internal antennas and multiple streams without a problem the g10 can be classified as a wave 2 mu-mimo router for those wondering mooo memo stands for multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output this means multiple users can simultaneously stream high bandwidth data to the same network without hindering performance hence why as rock used a beefier CPU controller and memory taking a spin at the i/o we have a couple of IR transmitters separate WPS buttons for the 5 gigahertz and 2.4 gigahertz networks for Gigabit LAN ports a single LAN port that's color coded in yellow two USB 3.0 ports reset power button and DC in the IR transmitters that I just mentioned are there for a reason let's say you have this router place in your living room besides your home appliance like your TV home theater system or even the air conditioner like logitech harmony series of remotes the sensor picks up and learns the infrared signals of your remote controller and by downloading the asrock a router app available on both iOS and Android you can use your smart phone to remotely control your home appliances through the router it's a pretty cool feature but I have a concern regarding the sensor placement at the back if you're going to toss this in a corner of a room rather than having this towering figure clutter things up it would be difficult for the sensor to pick up the signal but if you solve these issues I would certainly use this feature on a regular basis and from our tests it did indeed pick up and learn various remote control functions across multiple devices the inclusion of two USB 3.0 ports on the g10 is a welcome feature as well you can connect flash drives external hard drives or even an ass and make yourself a personal cloud-based storage or back up solution setting it up was a piece of cake all you have to do is log into router as rom-com and configure the USB drive as shared storage device and click apply it reboots the router which does take about five to ten minutes so be mindful of that and what do you guys think of this UI to me it shares a lot of design elements from an old-school 8-bit game and for $200 I expect something cleaner than this and even though the interface is quite responsive asrock I'm sure you can fix this with an update on a positive note the complimenting app that's available on both Android and iOS looks nice and works well when you fire it up asrock requires you to register an account with them and once you have done that log in and add the newly installed g10 router that's connected to your network tap on it and you're greeted with the router setting IR control and storage I was interested to see how well the g10 could stream movies from my USB device or the network and to my surprise it worked like a charm I have a thirty down five up network set up and 1080p blu-ray movies ended up streaming really well when I'm upstairs near the router and downstairs in my living room and kitchen the app also lets me download delete rename copy and move files within the network drive and I can see myself using this feature a lot just for craft footage hats off as rock the overall performance of the g10 was solid most of my devices were connected on the 5 gigahertz band and the speeds were consistent throughout my household that being my office my sister's bedroom the living room downstairs and again even the kitchen I also happen to have the shield TV from Nvidia so I wanted to see how well game stream would run and yes the g10 handled it perfectly I experienced no signs of lack throughout my gameplay and this itself shows how strong and reliable this router is there is one more thing to cover and that's the included h2r dongle held magnetically at the top portion of the router its main focus is to provide HDMI miracast abilities much like Google's chromecast and it also acts as a wireless access point when traveling mirror casting did indeed work for the most part setup process wasn't too all you need to do is plug the h2r into the TV via HDMI plug the included USB cable into the TV's USB port for power and have your smartphone set up the whole system what disappointed me was the UI take it with a grain of salt but this is definitely the worst you I have ever seen compared to the competition out there streaming pictures or video from your smartphone is just too complicated and the chromecast seems to do a much better job at that as for the H towards performance as a travel companion that's a bit more complicated the supposed benefit here is the ability to project a clear wireless network in an area where wireless connectivity maybe a bit spotty for example in a hotel room essentially all you have to do is connect the dongle to an rj45 Ethernet connection and it creates a strong low limited range multi-user wireless access point that can be protected behind a password to limit access the problem is actually powering it since azrog doesn't include an AC adapter rather you should be able to power it via a micro USB cable that's plugged into a cell phones wall adapter and any five volt USB plug should work but that's another component that you need to carry along with you and one that won't be recharging your phone the g10 is a fast router azrog did miss a few marks with the placement of the IR sensor lack of a dedicated led diagnostic and the immature looking web UI however on a positive note the performance on both 5 and 2.4 gigahertz bands were consistent and it got me into a point where I wished I had a better internet plan the h2r is a nice inclusion for the price and it gets the job done as well so would you consider the g10 as an upgrade from your current router if you don't mind things we mentioned earlier and what would you like to see in the next revision let us know in the comments down below on evil with hardware connects don't forget to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one