by Jarred Walton on 6/23/2012 12:00:00 AM Posted in wireless , Networking , Amped Wireless , 802.11n Buy the Amped AV3000 Walmart Wireless A V Net
$99.99
$90.76
$99.99
Introducing Amped Wireless
The world is full of technology companies, with plenty of long time players as well as smaller newcomers. There are so many facets of the industry to cover that it’s basically impossible to know everyone, so when Amped Wireless sent us an email I must admit that other than having seen a couple of their products on Newegg, I knew essentially nothing about them. Let’s start with a bit of background information, for those of you who might be in a similar state. While I wasn’t particularly familiar with Amped Wireless, it’s worth noting that their products are now available at many retail outlets, as well as the big online sources like Amazon and Newegg. You can find Amped Wireless devices at Staples, Best Buy, Walmart, Fry’s, Office Depot, etc. and they are now working to extend into Canada.
Amped Wireless was created three years ago as a sub-company of Newo Corporation, which was created around five years back by Jason Owen and offered some interesting computer peripherals (e.g. a personal USB fridge to keep your soda cold). Today, the Newo Corp website redirects to Amped Wireless, so it looks like that’s now the primary focus. Mr. Owen serves as the CEO for Amped Wireless, with a background in the wireless networking industry that goes back over a decade; he teamed up with a colleague with a similar background in order to focus on long range WiFi products and “do it correctly”.
Besides setting out to create better long range wireless devices, Amped also wants to make sure that customer service is a high priority; there will be no outsourcing of support to another country, and all customer support is US based and trained in-house. Unlike the support side of the equation, engineering is a different story. Amped Wireless has teamed up with engineering resources in Taiwan (and only Taiwan—they mentioned that controlling quality in some other areas can be very difficult), and they have a small team of around 20 that’s split about 50-50 doing work on the software/firmware and hardware aspects of their products.
Their very first product to hit the market came out about eighteen months ago, the SR150 wireless repeater. There really aren’t many wireless repeaters on the market, and they wanted to target that niche and create something that would be easy to configure for people that don’t know much about wireless networking. The product proved to be a success, helping users to extend their wireless coverage to difficult to reach locations—especially for users of all-in-one cable/DSL modem/router boxes that have very poor wireless range. After the initial product launch, they received a lot of feedback from customers who wanted to simply skip the repeater aspect and go straight to Amped for a wireless router; that led to the launch of their first router back in September 2011.
That brings us to today’s reviews. We have Amped Wireless’ latest and greatest R20000G router, SR20000G repeater, and the UA2000 directional wireless adapter. Like most wireless companies, Amped states that their products work best when used with each other, but we had no difficulties using the router with other adapters, or the UA2000 with various routers. The SR20000G also worked fine in general, with a minor problem encountered with one of our test routers (more on that later). We’ll start with a look at the R20000G router, then check out the SR20000G repeater, and finally look at the UA2000 adapter. Once we’ve covered those areas, we’ll wrap up with some performance investigations using several different products and see how the various devices actual work in practice.
Amped Wireless R20000G Router
Introducing Amped Wireless Amped Wireless R20000G Router Amped Wireless SR20000G Repeater Amped UA2000 Directional Wireless Adapter Testing Wireless Networking Performance Test Location A Results: Maximum Performance Test Location B Results: Performance at Moderate Distances Test Location C Results: Worst-Case Performance SR20000G Repeater Performance Closing Thoughts: Three Useful Devices, Depending on Your Needs Print This Article 
20 Comments View All Comments Post a Comment Just a heads up on the 4200v2 and 4500. by tonyt87 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 Cisco/Linksys switched to Marvell chipsets with the 4200v2 and 4500, the original 4200 uses Broadcom. 
tonyt87 Reply Amped Wireless Repeaters by arthur449 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 I used the SR10000 repeater recently to provide a solution for weak / non-existent signal anywhere beyond the far end of their apartment where they kept all of their computer equipment. I positioned the repeater in a higher/more centralized location and they get great reception to it.This is after I made absolutely sure they could not stand to run an ethernet cable/use powerline networking or reposition their overpriced fruit-branded wireless router to a new (higher) location rather than keeping it beneath a desk. Apparently, they have a fear of wires, yet hate unreliable connections. *shrug*
Anyhow, the repeater gives them reception in the places where it was simply impossible and didn't create any additional unsightly cords.
I've only run into one problem: When the fruit-branded wireless router loses power, the SR10000 repeater freaks the *$(@ out and does not automatically reconnect to the fruit-branded network when it comes back online. While I'm certain a static IP for the wireless repeater would fix this, the client can't remember the fruit-branded router's admin password and a full reset is strictly forbidden.
arthur449 Reply RE: Amped Wireless Repeaters by ShinyLeaf on Saturday, June 23, 2012 I have this same repeater (SR10000) and a non-fruit branded router with the same problem. I tried to switching to static IP and it doesn't fix the problem.Anytime the router / access point loses power, or the repeater loses the wireless connection for a sec (microwave interference, etc), the repeater just craps out and I need to unplug/plug-in to get it to reconnect.
Probably a firmware issue, but there hasn't been any update in 6 months.
ShinyLeaf Reply Not what it's stacked up to be... by irev210 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 There is a bigger comparison over at smallnetbuilder - not really that impressive:http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-r...
Pretty sad, really.
irev210 Reply RE: Not what it's stacked up to be... by mevans336 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 I read the Smallnetbuilder review and came away with the same opinion.Their "coverage" claims reek of sleazy marketing hype to confuse the average consumer. "Oh look, we cover 10,000 bajillion feet!" when in actuality, their coverage is no better than any other wireless router on the market.
mevans336 Reply RE: Not what it's stacked up to be... by JarredWalton on Saturday, June 23, 2012 Note that the smallnetbuilder review is for the R10000G, so there's no 5GHz support. Looks like 2.4GHz support is roughly the same, given our different test locations, though I was able to connect at the worst-case location without trouble. Also note that smallnetbuilder only tests with one wireless adapter on the newer routers, the Intel Ultimate-N 6300. If you couldn't tell, in my experience the choice of wireless adapter can make a very large difference in some tests.That's the hard thing with wireless testing: change any variable (router, adapter, time of day, weather, drivers, test laptop, positioning, etc.) and you can't guarantee the results are directly comparable. Ideally, I'd want to do a large roundup of at least ten different wireless adapters and test those with a couple different routers -- and if you really want to be apples-to-apples, you'd need to test them all in the same laptop or use a PCI card. From that, you can determine which adapters work best in general. Then take the top three adapters and test every router with those adapters, and you should be able to determine which routers work the best.
That, incidentally, is a TON of work, assuming you can even get all the hardware to test with. Given the amount of testing, you'd be looking at different adapters/routers on different days with different weather, so you'd probably need to test each adapter/router combination at least twice (e.g. several days apart) to verify there's no massive change in performance, and if there is then test a third time. I'm not sure if there's enough value in doing that much testing, so the result is more "rough estimate" type reviews, like what I've done.
JarredWalton Reply DD-WRT by Olaf van der Spek on Saturday, June 23, 2012 Isn't DD-WRT (development) dead anyway? 
Olaf van der Spek Reply RE: DD-WRT by JarredWalton on Saturday, June 23, 2012 I don't believe so; you can get a build dated March 15, 2012 for the ASUS RT-N66U for example. There are also similar tools out there (OpenWRT, MyOpenRouter--Netgear only on that one). I think it would be best to state that the set of new hardware being supported is very limited, so if you want DD-WRT support you need to shop with that intention. JarredWalton Reply RE: DD-WRT by Olaf van der Spek on Sunday, June 24, 2012 Latest stable release has been v24 SP1 (Build10020) and Latest development release has been v24 preSP2 (Build13064) for years.A build dated March 15, 2012 doesn't mean that much.
Is there a comparison between DD-WRT and OpenWRT available somewhere?
Olaf van der Spek Reply out of date by dgingeri on Saturday, June 23, 2012 These are out of date as soon as they are released. the new WD routers exceed these on features all the way across the board. 
dgingeri Reply Subject Comment Post Comment 
User Name Password Remember me? Login
1 2 Next » View All Comments Post a Comment 
Follow AnandTech 
Latest from AnandTech Pipeline Submit News! Samsung's Galaxy S 3 US Marketing Focuses On Features New Windows Start Screen Demoed on Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7.8 Microsoft Announces First Windows Phone 8 Hardware Partners, Qualcomm SoCs Inside [Update: MSM8960] Existing Windows Phone 7 devices will get updated to Windows Phone 7.8, not Windows 8 Windows Phone 8 Adds support for Multi Core SoCs, Higher Resolutions, microSD, and NFC Microsoft's Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco - We're There Acer’s Timeline Ultra M5: Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks with Kepler GPUs Hynix to Acquire Link A Media Devices (LAMD) Microsoft Surface - We Go Hands On [UPDATE: Detailed Impressions] iBuyPower's Valkyrie CZ-17 Rides In Nokia Announces PureView 808 Coming to USA for $699 Microsoft's Major Announcement in LA - We're There! DailyTech Lian Li Shows Off New EATX PC Case with Front-Mounted PSU Samsung Expects to Sell 10 Million Galaxy S III Smartphones in July Sony, Panasonic to Collaborate on Next Gen OLED Panels for TVs and Large Displays Report: RIM's Bank Advisers Suggest Sale of BlackBerry Handset Business Website "Funny Junk" Steals The Oatmeal's Work, Sues Charities MIT Builds All-Carbon Buckyball and Nanotube Solar Cell Louisiana Sex Offenders Must Make Their Crimes Visible on Social Networks 6/22/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews -- "Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition" Edition United States Accused of Using Flame to try to Cripple Iran's Economy Microsoft Surface Tablet to be Wi-Fi Only at Launch AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Earns "Tie" With GTX 680 Nintendo to Release Larger 3DS XL in Japan Next Month, U.S. in August for $199 Yesterday's Global Twitter Outage Caused by "Cascading Bug" SSDs Become More Attractive as Cost per Gigabyte Continues to Decrease Sony Announces Plan to Increase Production Capacity for Stacked CMOS Image Sensors TWC Prevents DVR Commercial Skipping with New Patent Quick Note: Ford Respond to JD Power MyFord Touch Criticism... Sort of Twitter Logging off :) @PenLlawen I started AT in 1997 when I was 14 :-P @scottwasson congrats man! 10 minute nap/sleep then off to the airport, but at least I don't need to carry any laptops/tablets with me this time. @Bindibadgi you know me too well :-P @Bindibadgi everything but the phone, have no plans of using it except to get around though :) I turn 30 on Tuesday, flying someplace relaxing for a couple of days. First vacation in nearly a decade. 2012 MBA and more when I get back. @tldtoday thank you :) One more review done, will post Monday morning (it's a short one, I promise) :) @mpanzarino thank you very much :) 
Copyright © 1997-2012 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information
blackmagnum Reply RE: A welcome trend. by Fleeb on Saturday, June 23, 2012 I don't get it, I mean, what if another manufacturer thought of the idea first. I guess it wouldn't sell then. 
Fleeb Reply RE: A welcome trend. by KoolAidMan1 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 It probably wouldn't happen since other manufacturers are more focused on cutting corners and driving costs down as much as possible. Great for making their products more accessible but not so good for putting in bleeding edge technology. 
KoolAidMan1 Reply RE: A welcome trend. by Johnmcl7 on Saturday, June 23, 2012 Rubbish, there are plenty of other companies who are far more innovative than Apple whose machines look basic in comparison - Sony's older Z series had a very high resolution 13.1in 1080p screen, blu-ray writer, quad SSDs in RAID 0, integrated and discrete graphics card and the fastest of te dual core i7's while still smaller and lighter than Apple's 13in machines and that was a couple of years ago. Apple aren't even close to touching most of its technology and probably never will.
Johnmcl7 Reply RE: A welcome trend. by tayb on Saturday, June 23, 2012 Link to prove the existence of that product? It does not seem possible to put all of that into a 13" chassis that is thinner than the incredibly thin MB. Honestly, it doesn't possible to fit all of that into a 13" model in general. 
tayb Reply RE: A welcome trend. by DeciusStrabo on Saturday, June 23, 2012 http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Ca...
DeciusStrabo Reply RE: A welcome trend. by tayb on Saturday, June 23, 2012 That doesn't have 4 SSDs, which was the biggest red flag in my eyes. 
Turbobusa311Hp Reply RE: A welcome trend. by DJTryHard on Saturday, June 23, 2012 It had quad Raid 0, 4 separate chips.
DJTryHard Reply RE: A welcome trend. by extide on Saturday, June 23, 2012 i7 620M is Dualcore Arrandale, not Quad.
extide Reply Subject Comment Post Comment