Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WNDR3300 RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

This seemed like one of the best home use Netgear wireless routers when looking at the Netgear model line up. When I bought this router, I didn't fully understand how "dual band" worked, but it sounded good for reducing interference. I wanted the best, so I got this one.

Now I realize I cannot benifit from the dual band. The WNDR3300 can only be wirelessly configured in the following ways:

N at 2.4 GHz with max 270 Mbps (uses +- 4 channels for extra bandwidth, a/b/g clients also work)
N at 5 GHz with max 270 Mbps and Legacy G at 2.4 GHz with max 54 Mbps
N at 2.4 GHz with max 130 Mbps (considered neighbor friendly version, reduces number of channels utilized)
N at 5 GHz with max 130 Mbps and Legacy G at 2.4 GHz with max 54 Mbps

So if you don't have any N clients that can utilize 5 GHz, you cannot benifit from dual band. I also ended up having a client (LG BD390 Blu-ray player) that just would not work using N at 2.4 GHz (even though LG documentation says it is compatible with 802.11n draft standard). For this one client, I had to step down to Legacy G at 2.4 GHz. I would have been fine with just an old fashion G router.

Doing some tests, I realized with Legacy G, I was getting the same performance with N at 2.4 GHz with max 270 Mbps, so I wasn't too disappointed about having to step down to Legacy G. Hopefully LG and/or Netgear will provide a firmware update that will allow the two devices to communicate using N.

Signal stength is better than what I had before. I can now stream Vudu HDX wirelessly (extreamly demanding). With my previous router, I could only stream Vudu HD (less demanding). So I hesitate in taking this back, thinking I paid more than I needed to. There are multiple antennas in this device and the lights on the big blue button tells you which antenna is being employed. This antenna technology also seems to benifit Legacy G. By the way, you can shut off the flashing blue lights just by pressing the big blue button (hold less than 2 seconds).

-- Begin Update 12/15/2009 --
I did some further tests comparing N with Legacy G. It seems the N on 2.4 GHz with max 270 Mbps has worse range than the Legacy G. I'm comparing signal bar strength of various apps in various locations in my home. So it seems stepping down to the older G works better. All in all, I've decided to keep this router dispite my uninformed decision to purchase it. I'm convinced the 8 internal antennas is helping matters compared to my previous router. Performance is markedly better than before, so I don't want to risk taking the time and money to experiment.
-- End Update 12/15/2009 --

I bought this originally to switch over to Wireless N from G but since everything I have uses wireless G I just recently decided to use this as a wireless bridge for my blu-ray player with my wireless old wireless G router.

You can flash this router and run DD-WRT and then use it as a wireless bridge. The actual process to do this takes about 15 to 20 mins but having never done this it took me over an hour but did work on the first try after following directions on here [...] and [...]. Its working great as a bridge and I haven't had any issues with dropping the connection.

If your not computer savy this probably will take you some time to do but in retrospect it was not too difficult. The instructions are pretty long but if you follow them you will get it working.

You need to download two files from the DD-WRT website. The first is a .chk file and dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic.bin (there are a few versions but the mini is the one that is recomended). Both of these files can be found here: [...]. Install the .chk file first following the directions on the above links.

I got this router refurbished for under thirty dollars so its was way cheaper than buying the wireless dongle for the blue ray player and also allows multiple connections where the dongle would just support the bluray player.

The fact that you can set this up as a wireless bridge is a big plus. Without that it would probably still be in the box it came in.

Update: I have had this running with DD-WRT firmware for over 3 weeks now and it still has not once lost connectivity. Completely trouble free operation. Maybe running it with the netgear firmware causes others to have connectivity issues. Its been rock solid so far for me so if you get this and flash it with DD-WRT you should have good results. I paid under thirty for this as a refurb unit and it saved me $50 from not having to buy a wireless dongle for my blu-ray player. In addition it give me a second access point to hook up another wired PC and if the blu-ray player craps out I can use this with any other netflix ready player out there.

Looks like the links have been wiped out by amazon but the site is dd-wrt DOT com which gives full instruction.

After years of faithful service from my old Netgear router, I upgraded to this Netgear router. It does not allow any of the wireless computers in the house to connect to it with their internal cards. The push button feature does not work and Netgear tech support confirmed that. I set up a password on the router, and one laptop connected for ten minutes to it with its internal card and then could not reestablish a connection to it. I purchased two of Netgear's USB N adapters and those connect to the router - not the push button though, only with a password.

The N band network has a smaller range than the G band. If I go more than twenty feet from the router, the N band connection drops, and the dual band adapter finds the G band network. If I search for available networks, I need to move closer to the router to find the N band as available. My house isn't so big, but this is a disappointment because the N band is about five times faster than G.

Any computer that is hard-wired into the router does get a fast, steady connection.

2011 UPDATE: Well, it's been almost two years that I've owned this router and have been dealing with it's "issues". Every time I seem ready to move on and swap it for something trouble-free (relatively), it seems to behave, like it knows it's going to be replaced. Recently, after a few months of ok service, it suddenly gave me horrible service on my g network. My N network was completely fine. I was so frustrated that I unplugged the important stuff and took out my frustrations on it. I usually treat my electronics with respect and care, however, this one did not return the favor. So, I gave it a "what for" on the floor, made a huge racket and relieved some stress. I figured, 'hey, it doesn't work, anyway'. After the knock-down-drag-out part was over, I tried a new setting in the web control panel. In the Channel selection, mine was on Auto and it gave me HORRIBLE service. I picked a random channel, and it's been fine ever since. Like I flipped a lightswitch. Now, it works beautifully. My phones, istuff, roku, printer, cameras, HDD, all work great on their respective networks. Go Figure.
END 2011 UPDATE

* * GOT DROPPED SIGNAL? UPDATE THE FIRMWARE :) It's easy & cheaper than buying another router (& better for the environment). It may not work for everyone, but it worked for me, on my refurbished WNDR3300, well enough.

PRE-FIRMWARE UPDATE EXPERIENCE - (Highlights in CAPS or, skip down to the Summary if you'd like):
I've had this router for almost a year. When I purchased it, I was really the only one using the wi-fi (on a vostro laptop, running vista, and on a Nokia phone), my beau used the wi-fi rarely (on his latitude laptop, running xp, as well). It worked ok. Would drop signal every few hours on me (more or less) and a few times an hour for my beau. For me, the signal would return within a minute or so, for my beau it was a much more frustrating experience. Maybe that's why he rarely went online. A few months in, I bought a wi-fi-enabled canon PRINTER, I set it up, was concerned about the dual-band thing, but all went well. Works fine. A few months after that, we bought a WII (YAY!) it connected to the wi-fi fine, stayed connected for the most part, when needed. The router range seemed ok, but we were in a small house at the time. Then, we moved and just a few months ago, we signed up with NETFLIX (love it!), and a week later, we received a disc so we can stream TV shows & movies to our TV, via the wii. This is when we started to really notice problems with the connection. Maybe it's due to the energy star part of the technology?? The situation went from bad sometimes to terrible most of the time. I would reset the thing, mid-movie, over and over again, it was just awful, 90% of the time, the other 10%, it worked fine. Nothing's worse than getting really involved in a heart-wrenching movie about a young boy who runs the Boston Marathon, hoping a win will save his dying mom, just to be confronted with a still shot and a slowly-moving red "Retrieving" status bar, as he and one other runner race to the finish line. UGGGH! After a number of movie nights interrupted in this way, I decided it was time to buy a new router. I went on-line to do a little research and saw that others were having similar issues with this router, and someone mentioned a FIRMWARE UPDATE. I know how much FW updates have improved the function of my nokia phone, so I decided to try it. 2 stars, before update

POST-FIRMWARE UPDATE EXPERIENCE:
It was super SIMPLE, almost painless to do! You just go to the Netgear website, open the instructions and follow them. It includes going to your router's control panel, via your web browser and clicking something to the effect of 'update firmware'. It really was super easy. And it FIXES the problem! Well, the router does drop signal once in a while, but not nearly as much as it used to! I'd say this router was giving us problems 80% of the time, before the firmware update. Now, I'd say it gives us problems 10-20% of the time. Still not a 100% running router, but I already paid for it and it does have the cool dual-band feature (so I can run wi-fi N, and my beau and the rest of the house can run wi-fi g). In addition, as an extra measure of precaution, since it seemed from reading the reviews that the router's problem occurred when two or more things were wi-fi'ing on it, I hooked my laptop up to it via a CABLE. Have no problems with that connection, whatsoever! The printer, nokia phone, wii, and latitude, all seem to be utilizing the wi-fi 4 out of 5 stars. Note that this router does have the feature to NOT broadcast the SSID, so only those devices which already know the SSID, and enter it, can connect to it. I think that's a cool feature, good for privacy and security, I'm assuming. I tried to disable the SSID broadcast after the FW update, but my devices (or maybe it was end-user) had some issues reconnecting to the wireless network. I just re-enabled the SSID broadcast, put a little faith in my neighbors, and I was back, up and running in no time. 3.5 stars for working ok now, after extra work on my part

HEAT:
The router does get very hot on the bottom now. I used to keep it on a wirerack (never noticed it was getting hot, didn't check, either), but had moved it when I updated the firmware (finally had the free time to do so) and now, just to be cautious, I make sure it is never flat on a solid surface, like a shelf. It can stand vertical, but I don't know where the clip is for that, and with all the cables plugged into it, not sure how steady that would be. Dock a star for that, too. 3 stars, hot, but a lot of electronics do heat up

LIGHT:
Also, the erratically flickering blue-disco-dome on the top is extremely annoying. Pre-FW upgrade, it used to turn itself back on, but after the FW upgrade, it behaves itself better. Note that the light is extremely bright and the flickering is, IMO, extremely annoying. If left on at night, the neighbors think there's some sort of rave going on at my house. it would have been better if they made it 'breathe' or steady, if they feel they need this light. 4 stars for insane design, with option to turn off

RANGE:
The router is on the third floor, in the extreme front of the house, most devices can catch the signal throughout the house. The dell latitude is hit or miss, when it's on the first floor, in the extreme back of the house. A central location would probably eliminate that, but I've already fiddled with this thing enough, and everything that physically plugs into it is on the 3rd floor. My other router was older, 802.11b/g and seemed to have a much longer range. 3.5 stars for range, without extensive comparison testing

SUMMARY:
If you're in the market for a new router, there are probably others that work better. If you already own this and hate it, (& like to save money) try updating the firmware before buying another router, but keep an eye on the temperature. For me, the update was an easy process, and brought the router from 20% working to 80-90% working. Good enough, and free. Stars average = 3.2


I rely on reviews here at Amazon to help me make informed buying choices. I hope this review has helped you in the same manner. If you voted this as helpful, I Thank You! :)

I have just had the worst experience ever with a product and customer service with my first Net Gear branded purchase WNDR3300. Net Gear is aware that there is a firmware failure in this system that creates intermittent signal drops when more than one wireless device connects to this router - and they do not know how to fix it. This product works great if you are only going to be running one machine to it, connect more than one and you will lose your signal every 5 to 30 minutes with no explanation.

Customer service was horrific. I spent over 6 hours on the telephone over several days dealing with tech support reading scripted steps to resolve an issue that they already know cannot be corrected. They were very rude and will try to get you off the telphone as quickly as possible to avoid being asked questions regarding the signal failures. Even the tech supervisors will refuse to offer any support or refer you to a United States representative.

Very shiney and sleek machine, very nice connection for one machine at a time at 270mbs, connect more than one device to it and you get faster downloads going through the USPS.

Save yourself a lot of time, frustration and money and DO NOT BUY this product as Net Gear knows they are selling defective equipment that is supported by inferior firmware.

This is an N band router so it will not improve your speed if you have a computer on wireless G band. My RangeMax WNDR3300 came with the Wireless N adapter in the box since it was a gift from Amazon Vine program. I have also tried the Linksys WRT160N Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Broadband Router recently, which is a little cheaper than this router so I was able to compare the results.

Setup - Setup was relatively easy, though it took a bit of time to configure the 3 laptops which were to work with this router. I had to turn off the internal wireless G band card of one my laptops to use the N band adaptor. I found the Netgear setup easy but not as easy as the Linksys router which had better set up software. I also don't like the fact that the Netgear utility disables my laptop's internal wireless utility.

Range - This router gives me a lower range than my older G band router Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster. It shows only 25% network strength in spots where I was getting 75% in my home. However, the new Linksys WRT160N Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Broadband Router was no better either.

Speed - With the wireless N adaptor, the connection strength comes up as 270 Mbps if I use the N band wireless adaptor but my download speed is only marginally faster than with my Linksys G router. With the G band laptops the download speed is about the same.

Overall, this is a good router if you use the N wireless band. However, don't expect any big jumps in speed or range especially if you're still using G band wireless devices.

As a years-long Netgear customer I went with this router:


Good stuff:

+ Nice look, sleek black and silver design and varied LED colouring as a positive difference to fx. D-link's boring breadbox look with all-blue LEDs (trust me, all-blue indicators gets annoying after a while!)
+ No external antennas to interfere when messing with cables, or if it goes all bad, breaks off due to accidents.
+ Initial setup is easy.
+ Wired performance is good - the router does not seem to buckle (significantly) under heavy data loads.
+ The unit seems well-ventilated with discreet heat vents all along the edge of the unit, which is good (heat is the mortal enemy of solid state electrinics!). Additionally, touching the unit to feel for overheating after hours of operation shows that there are no high-heat-dissipative circuits inside (likewise good).
+ Features/price ratio is good.

Now for the bad:

- The wireless range, performance and reliability seems so-so. I claim no scientific accuracy whatsoever, only my own perhaps flawed experience, but the much-touted 802-11n (N! N!) wireless band - that is supposed to be faster and more stable - due to no other consumer electronics like wireless phones, microwave ovens and baby monitors using it - has only good performance in line-of-sight conditions. If you are using it though anything denser than a wooden wall, you might as well just go with regular 802.11g WLAN. The supposed ultradupersuper-innovative internal self-adjusting antennae inside the unit doesn't seem to be of much help here.
- The web browser control panel looks and acts positively archaic. It seems caught halfway between the frames-based page layout of the mid 90's and the web 2.0 of today. It gives a bad impression, and is cluncky to do more than basic setup in. Port forwarding is a drag to perform, in part because of the unintuitive look and feel, in part because every minor change requires a lengthy system pause (though not quite a reboot, luckily!).
- Worst, the unit has a reliability problem; at random times (though typically during heavy data traffic), the unit spontaneously resets. This is not due to overheating, because it is well ventilated where it stands. Other netgear users, not only of this router product, seem to agree with the spontaneous restarts. There has been no firmware to fix this problem, to my knowledge.


Summing up:

o A decently priced consumer product with fair features and performance for home users, but with its flaws. Advanced users should be prepared to spend more.

I purchased this item Nov 2008 and it has not worked correctly since then. It constantly drops the signal and many times have to reset the router. I have spoken to tech support 6 times and they try to fix it (change settings, download software) and each time it does not work. Their tech support and customer service is not very helpful. The last time I called customer service (a few days ago) and told them I want to exchange for a new one under the one year warranty. They told me that I need to upgrade my tech support since it is valid for 90 days only and that will cost me $$$. I told them I just want to exchange under the 1 year warranty. He hung up on me. I would suggest this company needs to revamp their customer service. I will not buy any products from this company in the future based on how they handled my last phone call.

I was previously using 2 Linksys Wireless routers - Linksys WRT55AG Dual-Band Wireless A+G Access Point + Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch & Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster - as I have A,B,G, and N devices in my environment. This allowed me to consolidate them into just this one device. Was a big Linksys fan for a while but recently bought a enterprise class switch from them that failed and replaced it with a NetGear that has been amazing. So when shopping for a Wireless solution to cover my new N devices I looked for a NetGear. I'm sold. I will be buying more NetGear from now on. I'm an IT Administrator so the setup for this device was quick and painless for me. Don't know how the setup wizard works at all. I just pulled the device and power supply out and configured it. As far as range I get about the same range as my previous wireless devices. Around 100 feet through walls and floors I get about 1/4 signal. My N connections connects at 300Mbps. My G connections are right on 54Mbps. 300Mbps is great for streaming media over my LAN. Works great, great price. Range could be better, but it is not any worse than my previous solution, so it all works great for me.

I bought a new home and my Netgear Rangemax MIMO Router, which has been wonderful and reliable for the last 3 years, wasn't able to push a strong signal to our second garage. With that said, I thought I would upgrade to N technology. I have had the WNDR3300 for about 3 weeks. I have tried everything to get this router to work properly but to no avail. Download the firmware upgrades - check. Contact tech support for help - check. Moved the position of the router - check. Changed the routers settings - check. One of my computers is a mere 30 feet away with no significant wall structure between it and the router. As with all four of my (brand new Dell) computers, a very good to strong signal is always indicated. However, over 50% of the time the internet will seemingly freeze at any given time and never recover unless rebooted. I am stumped on how to solve the problem. Needless to say, the router is going back.