Zebronics NWC-WR150A

Known for their aesthetically pleasing computer hardware and peripherals, Zebronics launched products in wireless segment, under the brand name NetWiz -Network Wizard. There are four wireless routers in this family. We received NWC-WR150A router that neither comes with 3G data card nor with USB storage support. The router supports the high speed connectivity 802.11n standards; something that that you will not usually find in such a low cost router. NWC-WR150A comes with all regular features that are expected in a router (access interface of router at 192.168.123.254). The feature that we found most useful is Schedule Rule, using which an administrator can schedule a specific action. For example, you can have a rule where FTP service is turned off at 5:00 PM every day.

To test NWX-WR150A, we created an isolated N network with the router connected to two machines - one with the LAN cable and other wirelessly. Then using Qcheck 3.0 benchmark, we checked the average throughput with 1000 KB payload. In this test, the router clocked an average speed of 80 Mbps, which is same as that of Netgear WNDR3700 Router (priced close to Rs 10,000) reviewed in the Feb 2012 issue of PCQuest. We also transferred 50 MB of data from one machine to other and here again, we got an excellent transfer speed of 14 seconds, which is almost as good as 12 seconds recorded by Netgear WNDR3700.

Bottomline: A low cost router for SMEs that also delivers good performance.