The TEW-673GRU

The TEW-673GRU is a sleek looking product. The glossy outer shell combined with the LCD display does give it a very nice look. I would have liked it if the display was able to tilt freely, but again, that is not going to be a deal breaker.

The front and top are clean looking with a single power light (blue LED). All other information about what is connected can be found on the LCD display. There are four buttons that control navigation around the readouts here.

The back side has the four GBe LAN ports, a single GBe WAN port and two shared USB ports for drives.

The bottom is sort of boring, but does have vents for airflow.

As we mentioned above, there is a small LCD screen on the top that can provide you with continual information as well as a few options for managing the TEW-673GRU. This is further demonstrated in the shots below.

Wireless information is available and can be broken down by the band you are using.

You can even initiate WPS (wireless protected setup) from the LCD screen and view the current PIN.

In terms of specs, the TEW-673 looks pretty good on paper, especially for their wireless transmission. For the normal frequency range of 2.4GHz they are using the standard channels 1-11, while the 5GHz band uses channels 36 - 161, but each channel is four steps off, (i.e. 36, 40, 44, 48 etc).

Both of these represent differences in the actual frequency your router is using. The 2.4GHz range is also commonly used by newer cordless phones and is also the same range that almost every other wireless router uses. So you will find that you may need to change channels to get the best signal.