TRENDnet 'world's smallest' Wireless N travel router now on sale
Looking to take 802.11n to places you never thought possible? You know -- like your studio apartment on the Upper East Side? TRENDnet's Wireless N Travel Router (which was announced way back at CES) is tailor made for cramped spaces, fitting within the palm of your hand and offering up a single WAN port, a carrying case and a USB socket. Unfortunately there's no internal battery to keep this puppy alive in the wild, but for $79.99 we can't kvetch too much.



















That might as well be a shot of my desk (MacBook Pro, Wacom Tablet, Stylus) although my desk is not nearly as nice.
Guys, its not the size of the router that matters.
there there, its ok little guy, let it out!
I bought this exact unit in Tokyo in January - it is model Skylink LAN-PWG/GAP. It was about $40. It is very thin.
The router itself may be small... but it appears to have an external power brick of some sort... I bet if you combined the size of the router and the power supply it would be bigger than the Airport Express... Not very advantageous for travellers...
It powers off of 5V/360mA which means with a USB to power cable you can run it from an iPhone USB adapter, laptop USB port or similar.
@jonathan
you just love your wires, dont you!!
Not to mention the Airport Express has USB printer sharing and audio out for AirTunes. If this thing has built-in power like the AE, then it's a contender at this price. Otherwise the AE is a far better bargain for travelers.
Newegg sells it for $49.99.
Pshh, poor excuse for a D-link clone. I bet it doesn't even have client mode like D-link's.
It does.
what nobody seems to point out is that this is a good alternative to a wireless adapter. I bought one of these for the sole purpose of adding wireless-N to my PS3. the upside is it gets power off one of the PS3 USB ports. The only downside is that this router boots about 15 seconds behind the ps3, so you get a 'ethernet not connected' message until the adapter boots up.
I didn't know a PS3 would recognize a wireless router...so technically your PS3 is doing Wireless N for gaming now?? Hmmmm.... :-)
I think the Airport Express 802.11N is way more compact and offers much better value and it also comes with built-in print server and music streaming.
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/
Agreed. Even if it's a tad bigger, it streams music, has a print server, and no wires. It is the power brick. As a traveler, it's great to go into a hotel, set up my Logitech speakers and portable printer, plug it all into the Airport Express, and be done.
It's also twice the price, so...yeah, you get more features for your extra $49.
I'd second the previous statement, it looks like the Airport Express is more compact. Wherever or not the extra features of it are wortht he extra dough is another question.
It's also more white, AND overpriced just like this, and when traveling you can wrap it in your turtleneck shirt.
@ Wwhat
and of course you, the MS Fanboy, have to run your mouth. Apparently you either hate portable Wi-Fi N routers with built-in print server and music streaming or have not a clue of what you're talking about. Which one is it? There is no other choice.
I am a bit confused - I am a Apple user but how the heck can you say the Airport is more compact? I have the D-Link Unit in the same case as this and even with power adapter it takes up less room (and has a power Cord - sorry I like cords and option to use USB power).
This product and the D-Link have a Switch on the bottom to select - Router mode / Access Point mode / Client mode and keeps settings for each. Airport Express's do not do that.
My D-Link has helped me out quite a few times - running to a client that doesn't have a wireless network and having to work with a co-worker in a room without two network drops and this unit is much smaller than even those little 4 port mini-switches.
Based on my experiences with the D-Link unit I am going to purchase this version at Newegg for $49.99 (much cheaper than Think Geek - sorry) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156262
"I am a bit confused - I am a Apple user but how the heck can you say the Airport is more compact?"
Are you perhaps confusing the Airport Express with the much larger Extreme, which is a full-size router with multiple ports?
As much as I love my DWL-730AP, this one is 802.11n
Times are-a changin'
Kind of reminds me of this one except now with N feature added
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=346#
Just like my Wireless-N access point from TrendNet this thing is stuck with a 10/100Mbps port. Whats the point of having a 300Mbps wireless N connection if your wired connection out to the rest of the network is capped at 100Mbps. 108 Super G would have been perfectly fine with that hard wire cap.
Well spotted, and most peculiar, is it so hard to get some gigabit going this day an age?
how about when transferring data between 2 wireless devices on the network at 802.11n speeds while the ethernet jack is connected to the internet that's less than 100Mbps. seems like a likely scenario for a travel router.
The thing is the actual throughput for 300 Mbps (for me at least when I tested this compact router) is averaging at around 60-70 Mbps when in ideal range. Just for comparison, 802.11g typically averages at 20 Mbps in actual throughput.