Luminoir

I love this router.

We bought it to replace the Planex BLW-HPMM-G router we had and it is brilliant.

Firstly, the combination of Gigabit ethernet and Wireless Draft N mean our file transfers are going so much faster than they used to.

A 1 GB file that used to take me 2 or 3 minutes to transfer over the network is now copying over in less than a minute.

Of course, it helps that the MZK-W04G supports jumbo frames but the feature that gets me excited is the dual USB ports at the back to connect harddisks to serve as an NAS.

Essentially, if you want write support on Macs, Windows and Linux, you can partition the drives to ext2 and download the necessary drivers for all OSes to read the filesystem, should you choose to connect them directly to your computer. I don’t see any reason why it’d be necessary though because the transfer speeds over Gigabit are sufficient.

As a test, I ingested a 20 minute file encoding to DVCPRO50 PAL with 2 tracks of 24 bit 48kHZ audio with nary a frame dropped.

The wireless performance is also really impressive.
My director sits on the opposite side of the office about 80-100 metres away from the router.
The signal also has to pass 2 edit suites and a machine rack to get to him.
He experiences some signal degradation but still has no problems copying and transferring video files to and from my computer.

My decision to get this router was pretty simple.
I researched every single router I was considering by googling their product name and the following phrases.

1. Issues
2. Problems
3. Dropped

Basically, what I was looking for was any potential problems or widespread build issues.

The only results I got for the MZK-W04G were glowing forum posts and recommendations.
Add this one to the list.

Well done, Planex. Please expand your product line in Singapore, I’m especially interested in your 2.5″ Harddisk-Memory Card Reader Combo that has still failed to be available here.

EDIT:

Just to add to this, a few weeks after this post, a freelance editor who takes over me once in a while, got his iPhone added to the router permissions list.

The next day, as he came in, he asked me for the model number and make of the router. Apparently, while he was parking his car 3 floors down in our industrial building, which has 3 metre high floors, his iPhone prompted him to connect to the wireless network. Now that leaves me a little concerned about what those signals are doing to my brain chemistry, but a very impressive connection strength story nonetheless.