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TRENDnet Wireless N Gaming Adapter TEW-647GA Black Description:

The Wireless N Gaming Adapter (TEW-647GA) connects your favorite Ethernet-ready gaming console to a lag-free wireless n network. No need to locate your gaming station near an Internet connection cut your cables and start winning with highperformance wireless n. Setup is quick and simple, with no drivers to install. Works with Nintendo Wii , Xbox , Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 and 3. Connect multiple gaming consoles wirelessly and play head-to-head or challenge others over the Internet in multiplayer mode. The latest in wireless encryption ensures wireless security. Advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna technology reduces wireless dead spots. Wireless Protected Setup (WPS) lets you integrate other WPS devices into your secured network quickly.

• Brand: Trendware
• Model: TEW-647GA
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 321
• Dimensions: 2.50″ h x 6.10″ w x 9.90″ l, .18 pounds

Features

• Connect your game console to a high-performance wireless n network
• Play online or connect multiple consoles to play head-to-head
• Works with Nintendo Wii , Xbox , Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 and 3
• One-touch Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
• 3-year limited warranty

Customer Reviews:

Inexpensive and works as it should.
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RU5BGY0UTYZ45 First off, I had been keeping my eye out for a cheap alternative to the 360’s wireless adapter for sometime now, and when I saw this unit as apart of Amazon’s lightning deals for $30, I couldn’t pass that up.

Before buying this unit, I was sure to peruse for reviews to see other peoples’ luck with the item and was left a bit confused on how the product would work. After playing around with the various settings and getting it to work, I want to just clear the confusion on how this will perform. Also, I have a Bachelors in Computer Networking, not that that means anything, but I have had a good bit of experience playing around with different routers/switches and while reading through the reviews I was left baffled by the varying contradicting opinions of the product.***On a side-note, these types of At Home networking devices are aimed at ease-of-use and my experience had very little effect on how much more/less difficulty I had getting the product to work other than enabling me to filter out the weaker/inane reviews of the product.

Let me clear up the marketing confusion first. This item is a Wireless adapter. IT WILL ALLOW YOU TO CONNECT VARIOUS ITEMS WITH AN ETHERNET JACK TO YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK. That means if you have a desktop with an ethernet jack in the back that you would like to be able to hook up to your WIFI without stringing it to your router, this will work. For the “gamer’s” that for some reason this item is targeting(most likely the xbox 360 owners), this item works flawlessly and comes strongly suggested given a few caveats(i.e a bit more cumbersome than Microsoft’s options Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter A/B/G Networks Only,Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter A/B/G & N Networks given that it has to be plugged into an electrical outlet).

I’ll try to give you guys a step-by-step run through of how the configuration process worked for me.

First, I plugged it into an outlet and connected an ethernet cable from my PC to the unit(for the non-techies out there, this should work the same regardless of the Operating System you’re on).

Second, I popped in the CD that came included and loaded the router setup software off of the CD. This step was a breeze given that there was no installation of anything onto your computer, as other reviewers had falsely alluded to.

Once in the router setup software, I did run into a few odd hiccups that slowed the overall process. The software was able to find the device right away and I was off and running setting up the unit, although almost every time I hit OK or Next through the prompts, I was returned with something like “Error, the changes were not made” though they were… Other than that, the setup was pretty quick and painless and should be no problem to those that dread anything techie like many of those in my family, given that they read the manual and follow the instructions. And once you have it setup to your wireless network, it’ll pretty much connect any of your devices that has Ethernet port to your wireless without having to run through the setup process again. All the settings are saved so you can just move the unit anywhere. As long as you don’t tweak anything in your router, this unit should be able to be unplugged and moved around as much as you like and still connect you every time.
**My issues with the strange contradictory error messages were solved once I upgraded to the latest firmware

As for performance, this unit has worked flawlessly for my needs. I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 and a few other games through it on my 360 and had no significant lag or difference between playing through this unit over playing it hooked up to my router with an ethernet cord. I also tried streaming a few movies from my PC, and again, it worked flawlessly while I fast forwarded/backward and skipped chapters. Though I have yet to try streaming anything HD from services like Netflix, I don’t imagine anyone would have any problems given the much more than sufficient bandwidth that this unit provides as long as you have a capable internet connection from your Internet Service Provider. I also unplugged my computer from the router and plugged it into this unit just for kicks and, unsurprisingly, it works just as it should.

The device itself is surprisingly small and sleek, though it is a bit of a finger-print magnet. Something of note too, is at the top of the router lies a Wifi Protected Setup button(WPS) that I’m guessing would make the process even easier by eliminating the need for the PC setup process if your router has support for it, mine did not, so I can’t comment on that.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this product to anyone looking for a cheap way to connect their devices up to their wireless network. Even if I hadn’t gotten it on Amazon’s sale, knowing what I know now about it, I would gladly buy this unit again. That’s my 2 cents anyways and I hope it helped.

**Update
So after about 4 months of owning this product I am still very satisfied with my purchase. I did run into a pretty frustrating problem after my house lost power. My router was reset and the Trendnet adapter did not seem to want to stay connected. After a bit of poking around, I managed to fix the issue by going through Trendnet’s provided setup software again and giving the device a Static IP. It’s been working flawlessly since. (*Of note though, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated issue, I have seen a few other reviewers state having inconsistent connection issues as well. If you get that issue, just try what I did and the device will be working the way it should in no time.)

Save Yourself the Hassle if Using on Xbox 360 - Get the Microsoft Adapter Instead
I purchased this for one reason, it was an “N” band adapter that could be used on the XBox 360 and was less expensive than the Microsoft “N” adapter. I was, oh, so looking that the Trendnet adapter would work well given it’s price point. I wanted “N” band as I’m looking to use my XBox to stream music and videos in addition to playing games. If that’s your goal skip this adapter and get the Microsoft N adapter, sure you’ll spend a few more dollars but, as they say, you get what you pay for.

I have now been able to do side-by-side comparison on these two and can provide a summary of my experience. For full disclosure I’m using D-Link DIR-655 router with my set-up.

First, the good on this adapter:

- It will work on the XBox 360 (note comments below on performance, or lack thereof)
- It looks good with status lights to show connectivity
- It costs less than Microsoft’s “N” band adapter

However, let’s look at the not so good aspects of this adapter:

- Your connection rate will be MUCH less than if you used the Microsoft N adapter. With the Trendnet adapter my connection speed (as measured by the XBox network test) was just barely passable for TV. With the Microsoft’s adapter I registered a full connection on the graph, now suitable for TV as well as HDTV! I also used my router’s administrative status to get the actual hard reading, a 70-90 rate for Trendnet, 220-240 for Microsoft’s adapter, that’s a HUGE difference.

- You may need to make some changes to your router, I did. I had my router set for AES “Cipher Type”, by default the Trendnet required “TKIP”. I made change to my router, but later found I could login to the adapter’s administrative set-up and change this - however this is not an option when you go into the configuration screen the first time so you have to change your router to support TKIP. Time spent debugging the problem with Trendnet adapter 15 minutes, no time required with Microsoft’s adapter.

- You will need to set-up the Trendnet adapter using your PC, first installing the adapter set-up software, then configuring the adapter. I have 20 years of PC experience and given my set-up it was not as straight forward as I would have liked. I continued to run into problems where my IP address for the adapter wouldn’t show up in on my router status screen (it showed as 0.0.0.0 - that’s not right). I had to reset my router to get the IP address to show up. I found that I had to do this several other times over several days as it would revert to 0.0.0.0. I called Trendnet, they connected into my router remotely, they had no answers or suggestions. By comparison, I plugged in the Microsoft adapter to my XBox 360, selected my wireless network and entered my WPA password. Time spent setting up and debugging the Trendnet was 30 minutes, time with Trendnet Tech another 30 minutes. Using Microsoft’s adapter was about 1 minute.

- The Trendnet is advertised as “N” band, however my router only recognized it as “802.11g”(”G” band only). All other “N” band adapters on my system (3 others, now 4 including Microsoft’s) all register as “802.11n (2.4GHz)”. I asked Trendnet’s tech support why this would not show as “N”. I found their response to be quite interesting. Per the tech support, they tested the speed in their lab and achieved “N” band speeds, they therefore classified this as “N” band. This seems strange that they make their designation based on speed and this is not recognized as “N” band by my router, nor is speed anywhere near the “N” dual band that Microsoft’s adapter provides. As noted above, Microsoft’s adapter is properly recognized as “802.11n (2.4GHz)”.

- You’ll also need to have an additional A/C plug for the Trendnet adapter. With Microsoft’s adapter it’s powered by your XBox only.

My conclusion:

If you are looking for an adapter for gaming only (no streaming of music or videos), then this may be an adapter to look at.

If you are buying this to stream music and videos on network devices, based on my experience with sub-par network speeds (and not registering as an “N” band adapter), I’d look at other adapters.

If you are looking to use on XBox 360, go with Microsoft’s product, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration, will easily justify the additional $$ to get Microsoft’s “N” band adapter.

Note: The unit that I used for my review was the latest hardware and firmware offered by Trendnet (HW v2.0R with FW v1.01.22). As noted above, I, like other reviews, was able to connect my XBox 360 to the network wirelessly with this adapter. What I was lacking was performance. For basic gaming the low throughput that I found with this adapter won’t matter. What I’ve failed to see in other review is their actual throughput speed. If you are streaming video you’ll want a high throughput. Trendnet didn’t provide that, my experience was the rate was about 1/3 the rate that Microsoft’s “N” adapter provided. I had high hopes this would meet my networking needs, just unfortunately fell a bit short of target for me.

Good Product for the Price - Excellent Performance Once Set Up
After suffering for many months trying to stream DLNA content over a 54G network to my PS3, I stumbled across the Trendnet Wireless Gaming adapter. The price is great and when I received it from Amazon, I was pleasantly surprised that it was far smaller than I expected. It’s about the size of a wallet and hides next to the PS3 really well. I was a little disappointed to find that the setup required a direct connect to a PC, running a CD-ROM based setup program. There is a ROM based interface built into the adapter (which wasn’t really detailed in the documentation), but you have to run this setup first. (Some of the documentation and specifications are a bit vague; for example, I still want to know if the Ethernet port is 100 or 1000 Full) Within very little time however, I was up and running. The good part: it’s really fast! All of the delays I’d been experiencing before, with Cat5e cabling or 54G wireless, were gone. Streaming directly from Netflix works flawlessly, and streaming from my PC running PlayOn worked so much better. I am connecting it to my Belkin 802.11n Network + router. It didn’t take long, however, to discover one big issue though. Between uses, the adapter would drop off the wireless network. Didn’t matter if I left the PS3 on or turned it off. I tried setting a static IP address on the PS3 with no improvement. Each time, the only thing that worked was to disconnect and reconnect the power to the adapter, resetting it. The PS3’s DHCP request would then be passed and everything would be fine, until the next time (usually the next day). Not finding anything on the Internet, I tried a variety of settings until I found one combination that worked. I had to access the Trendnet adapters interface from a PC on the wireless network via browser, whatever it get assigned by the router, something like http://192.168.2.8. I disabled MMS- basically the Quality of Service option, and I changed the Channel Bandwidth from 20 to 20/40. Now, it stays on the network for days and works flawlessly. I’m very happy with the product now that that issue has been resolved. I’m assuming the issue was a result of a minor incompatibility between the adapter and my Belkin 802.11n draft router running on 2.4Ghz only, especially since most people seem to be having great luck with theirs. If you experience the same issue, give these settings a try.