Buffalo Technologies Turbo G High Power Wireless Smart Router

Reviewed by: mikethec

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Hardware appears stable; 16MB of on-board RAM and 4MB of flashable memory make this unit very attractive to anyone (newbie to enthusiast)

Weaknesses: Buffalo's firmware is mediocre at best - consider re-flashing the unit upon purchase (see comments below).

Overall Evaluation: I've now re-written this review (before submitting it) several times, and each time it's been a battle to hold the line between product review and college-level technical lecture. So I hope you will bear with me and I promise I'll make it worth your while to read "more than just ten words.".What makes Buffalo's WHR-HP-G54 hardware itself so attractive is that it comes with more RAM than pretty much all the units you see on the shelf at your local retailer (it comes with 16MB, the rest typically come with 8MB), and it also has 4MB of flashable memory storage, whereas most of the rest come with only 2MB. And in the age of commoditization and mainstreaming mass-production of wireless routers (and their overall declining product quality) a relative minority player such as Buffalo has to differentiate itself based on hardware features, stability, etc..Now, why did I title this review "A Diamond In The Rough"? Simple: this router is a wonderful product -- perhaps the best router I've ever owned, and I've owned several different brands -- but Buffalo's firmware (think of it as the operating system which makes this device function) is simply dreadful. So dreadful, in fact, that I almost thought I had a physically defective product. Yeah, it was *that* bad. However....I never intended to leave Buffalo's own supplied firmware on the unit; it only happened to be coincidence that it was that bad. So, what exactly was it that I did, and how has the unit behaved since? Well....Without going into the history of it, the open-source community (think: GNU/Linux) has been writing replacement firmware for wireless devices now for several years, both out of frustration with the quality of the various manufacturers' offerings, as well as a desire to add in more capabilities. There are several such projects going on, the two largest being DD-WRT and OpenWRT. I flashed this unit with DD-WRT's firmware, and this thing became absolutely rock-solid. It makes administration of my home network a snap, gives me access to the latest and greatest wireless security protocols, and it's constantly being reviewed and improved not by just a few employees of some company somewhere, but by many, many folks all over the world..While I would recommend this product without hesitation to most folks (obviously some people will need specialized features that this unit doesn't offer), what I would highly suggest you do before buying this wireless router or any other -- EVEN IF YOU DON'T INTEND TO FLASH THE FIRMWARE -- is to go to DD-WRT's product table:.http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices.and read through what the various specs (RAM, etc.) are. This is the single best possible way for you to know what it is you CAN get, and what it is you ARE getting for your money. Who knows, you may find features you didn't know existed that might make your life better, like a built-in web server, or support for an external USB hard drive, and so forth.