High Power Wireless-N 600mW Gigabit Dual Band Router (R20000G)

The Amped Wireless High Power Wireless-N 600mW Gigabit Dual Band Router (R20000G) is a dual-band 802.11n router from a relatively young company in the networking space, Amped Wireless. The company's focus is more on range than with throughput speeds. Range is a worthy focus; however, testing did not show any great range or performance improvements over similarly-priced dual-bands from Netgear, Cisco Linksys, or Buffalo. Range increases quite a bit though, when the R20000G is paired with Amped Wireless' High Power Wireless-N Directional Dual Band USB Adapter (UA2000) and by updating the router with the latest firmware.

The R2000G offers a good setup process, some advanced capabilities and decent throughput. Still, the $179.99 price is hard to justify when you can get dual-band routers? such as the Netgear N900 and Cisco Linksys EA4500 that can support as much as 450 Mbps under ideal RF conditions on both bands for nearly the same price. The R20000G, on the other hand, supports up to 300 Mbps on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.?Buffalo AirStation AC1300/N900 Gigabit Dual Band WZR-D1800H can now actually support up to 1300 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, thanks to the 802.11ac draft standard it incorporates.

Specs
The 20000G has two external 5dBi antennas which are detachable. The router has 600mW amplifiers to boost transmit power plus low noise amplifiers to increase receiving sensitivity.

As mentioned, both of the R20000G's bands can support up to 300 Mbps. The device is wall mountable and also ships with a stand so it can operate horizontally. The rear panel has four Gigabit LAN ports, a Gigabit WAN port, reset button, WPS button, and a USB 2.0 port for connecting storage devices. Printers are currently not supported but Amped states support will be made available in a future firmware update.

The router has a cooling vent on top of its casing as well as vents on the bottom. Still, it ran a bit warm after a day of uptime.

Setup
While the R20000G does not offer the wireless, practically automated setup of the latest Cisco Linksys EA-branded routers, the setup process is quick and easy and very well documented in the setup guide that ships with the device. Setup requires connecting an Ethernet cable from the computer used to setup the router, to one of the LAN ports on the router.

Once connected, it?s just a matter of opening up a Web browser to setup.ampedwireless.com (or to the router's IP address). This brings up the Smart Setup Wizard within the interface. The wizard can automatically detect the type of WAN connection. My connection was set up in about 10 seconds.

After the WAN is detected you have to re-log back into the interface, but logging back in is a smooth process. When I logged back in, the wizard picked up right where I had left off before I was forced to log out.

Setup then walks you through configuring the system time and wireless settings. By default, the SSID and security are already configured with WPA/WPA2 encryption. If you tweak the wireless settings, such as changing the SSID for example, the router requires a reboot. The reboot was initially a lengthy 120 seconds, but a firmware update that came out as I was testing knocked that time down to 30 seconds.

The setup process is very good. The interface and setup documentation is among the most polished and detailed I've seen in the router market. The install guide doesn't just tell you how to setup the router and then leave you on your own; you?re given detailed instruction on how to connect Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. There's even a section that answers questions about common problems that can crop out during a router install.

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