Philips Wireless Router SNB5600 - wireless router

Speed	Fast
Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	5 ports in all (1 wireless), easy to set - up and use, looks good, cheap
Disadvantages:	None that I can think of

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Purchsed this wireless router for my new home and am more than happy with it. With most plug 'n' play items its not always like that which leaves you pulling your hair out and normally swearing at the computer.

Opening the box you're greeted with a nice clean, modern, shiny black router box that can either be left on your deskptop (and it really does look quite good compared to most routers all things considered!) or mounted using the holes on the rear of it. I decided to mount mine on the rear panel of the desk so it's out of sight and keeps the worksurface looking nice and tidy. All of my friends router have to be left on the worktop because there is no way of wall mounting most of them. I've found mounting it means that there isn't a mass of cables coming on to the desktop making things look untidy.

Included is the router, power pack, ethernet cable, wireless adapter (for laptop etc), instruction manuals and setup CD.

Quite simply plug everything in, put the CD in and follow the setup instructions. No fuss, no messing, just nice, easy to use and follow instructions.

I paid £45 from Tesco for mine and it comes with a wireless adapter to plug in to another computer as well, so not only do you get the four ethernet connections on the router but you also get the wireless one. £45 for 5 connections!

The router also has a built in firewall so it can stop anyone from neighbouring properties accessing it and your computer which is a bonus as no extra firewall protection is needed as it is included in the software for the router.

If like me you aren't always sure about buying things like this and go with advice from staff in shops it's worth knowing that if you have a cable modem you need a DSL one, if on BT or the like i.e. your broadband uses a phone line, you need an ADSL modem. The man in Tesco who I was lead to with the words "this bloke is our expert" sold me the wrong one at first but when I went back there was no trouble, they just swapped it for the correct one!

All in all I'm very happy with it. What more do you want than something you plug in and it works straight out of the box?

http://www.ciao.co.uk