Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

The Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless Router is one of Netgear’s highest performance wireless routers for home, and it has a boat load of features while maintaining a low price point. In our review we test the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz performance, the NAS performance, and the ease of use of the Netgear WNDR3700.

In the Box

In the box you get, of course, the Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless Router, a stand for keeping the device vertical, a power supply, an Ethernet cable, an installation guide, and a resource CD. As a bonus you also get a certificate for 35 free song downloads and one free audiobook download.

Installation

Installing the Netgear WNDR3700 is fairly easy. All you have to do is plug in the power and the router will automatically start broadcasting at both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. By default the wireless network is not secured so all that you have to do is connect to it wirelessly or using an Ethernet wire. The router also supports Push ‘N’ Connect, which allows you to connect to the router with the push of a button if you have a compatible wireless card. After you are connected to the router it is also fairly easy to configure it. All you have to do is navigate to the given web address and you are redirected to the router set-up page. From here you can set-up all of your security and other settings. One thing that you might want to do when setting up your router is set the 2.4 GHz broadcast mode to broadcast at up to 300 Mbps, as the default is 130 Mbps for some reason. Failing to change this setting could result in huge speed disadvantages when transferring large files. Once you have connected to the router and set up wireless encryption, which is not required but we highly recommend, you are pretty much done unless you want to set up some more complex settings. The included CD will also give you step-by-step instructions on setting up your new Netgear WNDR3700.

Design

The design of the Netgear WNDR3700 is great. The router looks amazing; it’s sleek, shiny, thin, and is very aesthetically pleasing. The WNDR3700 has a sleek, glossy black chassis with LEDs on the front and all of the connections on the back. There is nothing on the left and right sides. On the top you will find the Netgear logo. All of the sides of the WNDR3700, except the bottom, are made of glossy plastic, which is a fingerprint magnet. Luckily, you probably won’t be handling your router too much after you set it up so this shouldn’t be a problem for most people. The WNDR3700 is designed to work in both horizontal and vertical positions. If you chose that you would like the latter; a detachable base is included in the box which allows you to stand the router up vertically. The WNDR3700 is also wall-mountable. Now, let’s talk about the front LEDs. There are nine LEDs in total on the front.  These include the LEDs for the power, the four LAN ports, the WAN port, a USB connectivity LED, and an LED for both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz bands. On the front you will also find a button that turns off all wireless connections and a Push ‘N’ Connect button, both of these have LEDs below them. Another interesting detail about the LEDs is that they change color according to what is going on. On the back of the WNDR3700 you will find the four LAN ports, the WAN port, a power button, the USB port used to connect an external hard drive and turn the router into an NAS (Network Attached Storage), or as Netgear likes to call it; ReadySHARE, and last but not least; the power port. As you have probably noticed from the pictures, the Netgear WNDR3700 features an internal antenna design, which still gives you great range while hiding the antennas. Overall, the design of the Netgear WNDR3700 is amazing. The glossy black finish and clean curved edges make it look sleek and professional. It may be a bit wide when horizontal and tall when vertical, but that is made up for in performance and features.

Features

The Netgear WNDR3700 has a boat load of features, almost all of the ones that you could want. Some of the biggest ones are, of course, that the Netgear WNDR3700 is an 802.11n router and also supports dual bands. This means that it is capable of broadcasting in both the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz frequencies. If you were wondering exactly what this means; the 2.4 GHz band is the most popular band and there are a lot of devices that use it including wireless networks, cordless phones, some Bluetooth devices, and more. This means that that there is sometimes interference which could affect speed or range. The 5 GHz band is more exclusive and usually provides better performance as there are fewer devices. The Netgear WNDR3700 creates two separate wireless networks for both bands. You can turn either of these off at any time. Naturally, you are also able to secure both bands with passwords. Another big feature of the Netgear WNDR3700 is that it has an NAS (Network Attached Storage) function, which requires an external USB hard drive or a flash drive to work. Netgear is calling this NAS function ReadySHARE, and it will allow you to access the files on your external USB hard drive or flash drive from any computer connected to your network. You are able to use the external hard drive or flash drive just as you would if it were connected to your computer, except for on multiple computers and without having to actually connect the device to your computer. The Netgear WNDR3700 supports both FAT32 and NTFS formatted hard drives, and you don’t even have to reformat your drive, you can just plug it in with data already on it and use it. The WNDR3700 also supports compact external hard drives that are USB powered. A cool feature about the NAS function on the Netgear WNDR3700 is that it supports the Windows SMB protocol, which allows you to access your external hard drive or flash drive through Windows Explorer without installing any additional software. As for NAS security on the Netgear WNDR3700, the only file security options that you have are password protection, which is still a pretty good option. You can add a password to any specific folder and any user trying to access that folder will have to have the password. This is great for situations when you have multiple people accessing the NAS, but you want their access to be secured. This way a user will not be able to access another user’s files. Most NAS devices have more advanced security options, but as the Netgear WNDR3700’s primary function is a router, password protection is a pretty good feature. The WNDR3700’s NAS function also supports DLNA, which allows you to stream content to gaming consoles and other media receivers. The router will also automatically scan for new files when using DLNA. Some other cool NAS features of the WNDR3700 are FTP and HTTP server support, which will allow you to access your data remotely, though to do this your internet connection will have to have a static IP address. If it does not you may have to use a third-party service along with the WNDR3700’s support. A cool feature of the Netgear WNDR3700 that you won’t find on many other routers is the traffic meter. The traffic meter basically calculates how much data you have been using and displays it. Other than displaying it the WNDR3700 can do a variety of cool things with the information including disconnecting and disabling the internet connection, popping up a warning message, and changing the color of the LEDs on the front of the router to alert you that you have exceeded you monthly limit. To do this all you have to do is enable the traffic meter, set your monthly limit, and choose whether you want to it to calculate the data downloaded, uploaded, or both. You can also make a time limit and make the traffic meter calculate the amount of time the connection to the internet is being utilized.  The traffic meter feature will probably be very useful for those of you who have a monthly internet quota. Unfortunately, the traffic meter cannot calculate the amount of data used by certain computers or devices on the network or disable their connections once the limit has been reached, it can only calculate the total data used by all of the devices connected to the network. The Netgear WNDR3700 also supports guest networks, which is when an extra network is created. The extra guest network is pretty much liked the regular network except for you can have a different wireless encryption key, or none at all, and anyone connected to the guest network will not be able to access any of the devices connected to the regular network. This is useful if you have guests but don’t want them to be able to access your NAS or computers. Another pretty cool feature of the WNDR3700 is its wireless repeater function, which enables it to boost the signal of any nearby networks that it can detect. Other than these pretty cool and unique features the Netgear WNDR3700 also has all the usual features of routers including port forwarding, quality of service (increased bandwidth for certain applications), and content filtering. A cool content filtering feature on the WNDR3700 is that it can send you an email when someone tries to access a blocked website. The web interface of the Netgear WNDR3700 is also very responsive and well laid-out. It is very easy to navigate and we were always able to find the setting that we were looking for. There is also a bar on the right-hand side which offers help and definitions of most of the things on the page. Overall, the web interface is great. For wired connectivity the Netgear WNDR3700 offers four LAN ports and one WAN port for connecting your internet modem. All of the ports are Gigabit. The Netgear WNDR3700 also supports all of the usual wireless encryption types including WEP, WPA, and WPA2. It also has a WPS (WiFi Protected Setup) function which allows you to connect devices with the press of a button instead of having to copy down the encryption key.

Performance

We tested the performance of the Netgear WNDR3700 in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, and we also tested the NAS performance. In our 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz performance we tested the maximum throughput, the average throughput over a minute and 30 seconds, and the range with obstructions and without obstructions. We completed these tests with a D-Link DWA-140 wireless adapter and at a fairly close distance to the router. In our 2.4 GHz test of max throughput the Netgear WNDR3700 achieved speeds of up to 10.58 MBps (Mega Bytes per second). We compared this to two other routers; the Belkin N+ Wireless Router and the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. The Belkin N+ Wireless Router scored 9.73 MBps in the max throughput test and the Apple Airport Extreme scored 5.08 MBps. This puts the Netgear WNDR3700 in first place compared to our other routers, which are both in about the same price range as the WNDR3700. In our average throughput tests for 2.4 GHz we used the same routers and wireless adapter to test with. The Netgear WNDR3700 achieved scores of 8.85 MBps, compared to a sore of 8.79 MBps with the Belkin N+ Wireless Router and a score of 4.97 MBps with the Apple Airport Extreme. This, once again, puts the Netgear WNDR3700 in first place compared to our other test routers. As for range, we found that the Netgear WNDR3700 has amazing 2.4 GHz range. In our obstructed test (in a building with walls and other obstructions), we were able to detect the WNDR3700 from a distance of up to about 300 feet. This is compared to about 370 feet with the Belkin N+ Wireless Router and about 290 feet with the Apple Airport Extreme. In our unobstructed range test the Netgear WNDR3700 had a range of 620 feet, compared to 650 feet with the Belkin N+ Wireless Router and 600 feet with the Apple Airport Extreme. This puts the Netgear WNDR3700 in second place in our range tests. Keep in mind that the obstructed range test is conducted in a building with multiple obstructions and does not represent what the range will be like in your own home. In the 5 GHz band we did the same tests but with a different wireless adapter; the Netgear WNDA3100 Dual Band Wireless Adapter. In our 5 GHz max throughput test the Netgear WNDR3700 was able to achieve speeds of up to 8.45 MBps. This is compared to speeds of 8.31 with the Apple Airport Extreme and speeds of 10.10 MBps with a DIR-825 Dual Band Wireless Router. This test puts the Netgear WNDR3700 in second place for max throughput performance at 5 GHz, but the speeds are still pretty good. For average throughput the Netgear WNDR3700 scored speeds of 6.19 MBps, compared to 6.12 MBps with the Apple Airport Extreme and 9.57 MBps with the D-Link DIR-825. This once again puts the WNDR3700 in second place, and this time the speeds aren’t that great at just 6.19 MBps. We were very disappointed with the 5 GHz range of the Netgear WNDR3700, which was just 230 feet with obstructions. This is compared to about 230 feet with the D-Link DIR-825 and about 280 feet with the Apple Airport Extreme. It seems that the Apple Airport Extreme finally pulled ahead in these tests, leaving the Netgear WNDR3700 and the D-Link DIR-825 tied in second place. In our unobstructed range test the Netgear WNDR3700 scored up to 640 feet, the D-Link DIR-825 scored 630 feet, and the Apple Airport Extreme scored 640 feet. This puts the Netgear WNDR3700 tied for first place with the Apple Airport Extreme. Overall, performance of the Netgear WNDR3700 is pretty good. 2.4 GHz performance and range was great, but 5 GHz range was a slight disappointment. 5 GHz speeds were also slightly slow. Another thing that the 5 GHz test compared to the 2.4 GHz test shows is that if you are in an area with little 2.4 GHz interference, like our test environment, you should use the 2.4 GHz band as it will give you better speeds and range. Other than all of the technical speed and range tests that we put the WNDR3700 through we also noticed that our computers and devices stayed connected to it perfectly. Apart from the speed and range tests, we also tested the performance of the NAS feature on the WNDR3700. First we would like to say that the WNDR3700 detected all of the external hard drives and flash drives that we connected to it without any problems. After we had connected the external hard drive we tested the read and write speeds with a wired connection, ensuring that the wireless connection would not be the bottleneck. We found that the maximum read speed of the Netgear WNDR3700 is 8.9 MBps and the maximum write speed is 3.8 MBps. We compared these speeds with the D-Link DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage router, which got a maximum read speed of 9.6 Mbps and a maximum write speed of 5.8 MBps, and the Apple Time Capsule, which got a maximum read speed of 14.3 MBps and a maximum write speed of 10.2 MBps. Whatever way you look at it the NAS performance of the Netgear WNDR3700 is slow. You do have to take into account that the two NAS devices that we compared it to are a good deal more expensive than the Netgear WNDR3700 and are more advanced NAS devices. With these speeds the Netgear WNDR3700 is suited to light network storage tasks and networks where there are only a few users accessing data at the same time. We did test video streaming on the Netgear WNDR3700 and found that high quality video streamed smoothly without lag or any other issues. Considering that the Netgear WNDR3700 is primarily a router and is also in a lower price range than the NAS devices that we compared it too, it scored pretty well.

Conclusion

Overall, the Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless N router seems like a great router. It has all the features you could ever ask for including 802.11n support, dual band support, a NAS storage function, and on top of all that, it looks great. Performance of the Netgear WNDR 3700 was also great; we were able to get decent throughput speeds over both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz bands, and range wasn’t too bad either. NAS performance was also pretty good considering that the primary function of the WNDR3700 is as a router. Overall, the Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless N Router is a great choice for its price point, and it goes for just $170 from Netgear’s store, although you could probably find it for less elsewhere.