The upside-down insect look is a well-liked one amongst Wi-Fi router producers, who appear to imagine that they are one thing you are going to maintain behind the sofa or in a cabinet fairly than try to stability on a slender shelf close to the purpose at which the web cabling enters your property.
The aggressive styling could make these units look incongruous among the many different tasteful artefacts you have gathered from journeys to Ikea and Habitat, although the usage of phrases reminiscent of ‘Predator’ and ‘Killer’ do not assist both. The names of PC {hardware} elements have been the butt of a number of jokes, however networking gear must be a few of the most boring equipment to obtain the sort of title you would possibly anticipate from an Air Power drone.
Nonetheless, they’re vital if we insist on residing within the early twenty first century, streaming, downloading and in any other case internetting it up. And when you’ve acquired a quick fibre connection and the necessity to switch knowledge shortly, these so-called ‘gaming routers’ have rather a lot to supply.
Acer’s Predator Join W6 is a Wi-Fi 6E router with the requisite variety of little leg pointed into the air (although it can be wall-mounted, through which case the legs splay out additional, giving it the looks of a giant bug that is simply hit the paintwork at excessive pace). There are vents carved into the plastic physique (the quad-core CPU is passively cooled), with some LEDs within the form of the Predator emblem buried beneath (these are fairly brilliant, however may be turned off), and a row of 5 Ethernet ports on the again.
Predator Join 6 specs
Wi-fi normal: Wi-Fi 6E
Max speeds: 600Mbps (2.4GHz), 4.8Gbps (5GHz), 2.4Gbps (6GHz)
MU-MIMO: Sure
Ethernet ports: 4 gigabit, inc Recreation port
WAN: 2.5Gbps
Processor: 2.0GHz quad core
RAM: 1GB
USB: 1x USB 3.1 Kind-A
Dimensions: 111 x 265 x 260mm
Weight: 875g
Value: $300 | £300
It is all very normal, although the design of the router means it takes up much more area than you’d anticipate from one thing that is principally sq., as by having the ability enter and USB port on one aspect, and the Ethernet ports on one other at 90° to that, you are pressured to place it in a diamond configuration to maintain the cables on the again.
A kind of Ethernet ports is the enter, and may take as much as 2.5 Gbps of internets. That is, to make use of a technical time period, rather a lot, and you will be distributing it by means of 4 gigabit ports (one in all which is a mysterious ‘Recreation’ port that claims to prioritise gaming site visitors and is the one you may need to plug your gaming desktop into) plus the Wi-Fi, which has a most throughput of seven.8 Gbps. That is a determine arrived at by producers including collectively the switch charges of the router’s three bands, fairly than being rooted (or routed?) in actuality.
So long as you’ve Wi-Fi 6E gear to speak to it (plain previous Wi-Fi 5 and 6 nonetheless do superb, however you may lose out on the flamboyant 6GHz band, which may be useful for avoiding congestion) these theoretical speeds are yours to do with what you’ll. As you may little question have seen, that is method greater than any potential enter, and outstrips common broadband speeds within the UK and US by 111 and 40 occasions respectively, however means the router will not be a bottleneck when you’re transferring knowledge between units, gaming and streaming on the identical time.
Fortunately, setup is a breeze. The wi-fi community is offered immediately, and there is a QR code on the underside of the router’s casing that will help you get linked by way of your internet browser. From right here, it is only a case of coming into your WAN particulars, giving the Wi-Fi channels amusing SSIDs and altering the password. There is a cellphone app that you should use for all this too, which is able to step you thru the setup in a extra beginner-friendly method.
As soon as it is linked, there’s an entire vary of options to, er, play with. Networking is not significantly horny however it’s important for contemporary life, particularly when you’re a PC video games enjoyer, so with the ability to simply slip into the admin panel and alter a setting is paramount. That mentioned, there’s usually no use nowadays, as routers have develop into superb at doing issues robotically.
Picture 1 of 3
Purchase if…
✅ You are trying to improve from an present Wi-Fi 5 router: When you’ve got the gear to benefit from Wi-Fi 6E’s options, however not the router, Acer’s Predator will do a job.
✅ You run a congested community: The sport prioritisation may even come in useful when you’ve acquired a busy community and need to be sure that your gaming site visitors takes precedence over film streaming.
Do not buy if…
❌ You are making an attempt to sleep in the identical room: The sunshine-up emblem may be very brilliant. It additionally might take just a few tries to discover a residence for, as the best way the cables go into two totally different sides means there is no flat ‘again’ to place up in opposition to a wall.
To accompany the ‘Recreation’ port on the again, the Predator W6 affords QoS options (‘appropriate with Intel Killer Prioritization Engine,’ so Acer crows) to prioritise your gaming site visitors. It additionally features a preset devoted to GeForce Now which is able to enchantment to, nicely, at the very least some individuals.
In any other case, hooking as much as a fibre connection (600Mbps in my case: not nice, not horrible) by each Ethernet and Wi-Fi 6 results in a steady connection and good throughput. Routers have been in a position to deal with a number of connections and complex community topography for a while now, so the actual fact it breezes by means of serving a number of streaming, gaming, and IoT makes use of concurrently is not something uncommon.
What routers are actually bought on are their massive numbers and their value. At £300/$300 there are cheaper Wi-Fi 6E fashions out there, although few with as spectacular a mixed throughput determine (Netgear’s RAXE300 hits the identical mixed pace, however its RRP is greater). If you wish to improve from the router your ISP gave you, then the Predator W6 will in all probability make an enormous distinction to a congested community with quite a lot of customers.
However the best way it is designed signifies that it needs much more consideration than most of us are keen to provide networking {hardware} inside our properties. It might have High quality of Service options, however its high quality of life format is one thing that stops it from being a simple suggestion.
