Amped Wireless Artemis AC1300 RTA1300M Wireless Router Review

1. Introduction & Pricing, Availability and Specifications
2. Router Details
3. Management GUI Details and Test System Setup
4. Benchmarks- Wired and Wireless Throughput
5. Benchmarks – Router Storage Testing & Final Thoughts

Introduction & Pricing, Availability and Specifications

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Back when 802.11n was in its heyday, Amped Wireless was the go-to vendor for high-performance extreme range solutions. Now with 802.11ac a few years into its deployment, we have a whole host of vendors producing solid, high-performance solutions.

To cater to those just entering or looking to get into 802.11ac, we have the entry-level platforms such as AC900 and AC1200. The Artemis from Amped falls into the entry-level market but puts a twist on it with a Qualcomm EFX platform offering AC1300 performance. AC1300 differs slightly from AC1200 in that they share the same 867 Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band while the 2.4GHz band comes in at 300 Mbps on the AC1200 platform and 400 Mbps on the AC1300 platform.

Amped has added additional features to the Artemis to make it a stronger AC1300 platform. These include MU-MIMO functionality that is powered by eight amplifiers along with beamforming and bandwidth optimization via QoS.

Pricing, Availability, and Specifications

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Specifications of the RTA1300M start off with throughput numbers for this dual-band solution. 2.4GHz is capable of 399 Mbps while 5GHz comes in at 866 Mbps, powered by two amplifiers for each band and another four low noise amplifiers. At the center of this platform is a quad-core ARM processor with no mention of its speed or the accompanying memory or flash. Moving on this platform has two detachable antennas and houses four gigabit LAN ports, a single WAN port and one USB 3.0 port for storage.

The MSRP of the Amped Wireless Artemis RTA1300M comes in at $129.99 with a one-year warranty.

Router Details

Amped Wireless RTA1300M

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Packaging follows the same color scheme we have always seen from Amped. An image of the router is on the right side of the box while a minimal amount of marketing fills the edges.

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On the backside, features are listed in more detail with a router comparison at the top and port listing at the bottom right.

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Amped has also included a breakdown on the edge of their packaging that shows you where the Artemis lines up in their portfolio.

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The scope of delivery includes a vertical stand for the router, with antennas and power adapter below.

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The front of the router houses a range of LEDs; these include USB, Wi-Fi, and connectivity.

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The back of the router houses reset, WPS, and power buttons with four gigabit LAN ports and a WAN port in blue.

Management GUI Details and Test System Setup

Management GUI

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The dashboard is the starting point to manage the Artemis. Like many vendors, this approach gives you a quick look at the status of your router.

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We start with 5GHz settings, which as you can see allow you to change bands and channels. Security options are at the bottom.

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2.4GHz settings mirror the 5GHz for the most part. At the top, you have access to the SSID, channels, and bands.

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Advanced settings include options for UPnP, IGMP, and VPN controls.

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QoS can be controlled by Mac Address, IP or as a group of devices.

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The RTA1300M is the first router I have seen come equipped with DoS prevention systems.

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Last but certainly not least is the USB functionality which enables this router to take on any USB storage device and make it accessible throughout the network.

Tyler's Router Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Z170 Premium - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Memory: Klevv CRAS 16GB (4x4) DDR4 3000 - Read our review
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS Storage: Intel 730 480GB SSD - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Secondary Storage: Intel 750 400GB U.2 SSD - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Case: Thermaltake P5 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200 - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks- Wired and Wireless Throughput

Wired Throughput

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We start of our testing with LAN throughput coming in at 952.3 Mbps. Comparable solutions for this product come from the AC1200 and AC1750 markets.

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WAN to LAN touched 932 Mbps, second only to the Linksys WRT1200.

Wireless Throughput

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Dicing right into 2.4GHz throughput, the Amped solution was able to reach 92 Mbps on the 20MHz band and 130 Mbps on the 40MHz band.

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Dicing over to the 5GHz, we reached a solid 91 Mbps on the 20 followed by 167 Mbps on the 40. The 80MHz band touched close to 300 Mbps at 294 Mbps.

Benchmarks – Router Storage Testing & Final Thoughts

File Transfer Speeds

For our router file performance testing, I use a SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB Flash Drive formatted in the FAT32 or NTFS filesystems. I then use NAS Tester 1.7 with a 100 and 1000 MB file size and loop it five times with an average result being charted.

The Artemis wasn't the strongest router in file performance but did manage 26 MB/s with the 100M file and 24 MB/s with the 1000M file. Switching over to write performance we found a nice increase up to 41 MB/s for the 100M file and 39 MB/s for the 1000M file.

Final Thoughts

Over the past few months, I have seen most of the Amped Wireless lineup come through, and as I use each solution, I find myself quite happy with the overall quality of their solutions. The Artemis doesn't veer too far from this quality, but you can tell the materials, more specifically the plastics, are thinner and not quite a beefy as the Titan or Athena. With that said, there were no major issues as I used this solution in my home network for a few weeks. I think the biggest negative would be with all the streaming of content I do myself, I ran into more buffering than I'm used to and that could just be me overworking the SoC in the router.

On the performance side, this solution had some solid numbers, reaching 952 and 932 Mbps in LAN and WAN testing while wireless throughput came in at 130 Mbps peak for the 2.4GHz band and 294 Mbps for the 5GHz band. File performance wasn't a strong suit for the Artemis, but it did show some respectable performance at 26 MB/s read and 41 MB/s write.

Overall, I don't dislike the Artemis, it's a solid platform for those wanting to get into 802.11ac and would probably work perfectly fine for the moderate user, but for users like me that stream content with multiple devices quite heavily, you may want to look for a more qualified solution.