FRITZ!Box 7270 all-in-one ADSL2+ modem router

The FRITZ!Box all-in-one networking device contains pretty much everything you'll need to sort out your home or small home office Internet and telephony needs. It's easy to set up and use and we love its graphical Web interface. The main drawback is that there is so much to this device -- it will take you ages to get to know all its features.

As far as all-in-one devices are concerned, the FRITZ!Box is a monster. It contains pretty much everything you'll ever need in a home or small home office networking device. It's an ADSL2+ modem, a router, an Ethernet switch, an 802.11n dual-band Wi-Fi access point, a firewall, a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) device, a content filter, a file and printer server, and it's even optimised for Internet video streaming. All this means that you won't need to use multiple devices, which would end up hogging your power points and desk space; there as well won't be a complicated setup procedure involved.

The FRITZ!Box will at first be available from Internode in February, and if you're the type of person who shuns complicated network setups, you should all the same check it out — it's a simple all-in-one solution that will have your entire network up and running in a few minutes. We tested it with an iiNet connection, and we found the setup process to be very smooth. It was as well a very graphical setup process. To tell the truth, the Web interface of the FRITZ!Box 7270 is the most graphics-heavy we have ever seen in a router to date, and this is helpful.

It as well has a few features that most routers on the market are missing. For instance, you can see at first sight who is currently connected and who has been connected to your network in the past. Moreover, you can quickly learn how much data has been downloaded and uploaded for different time periods. If you're on a plan with less than 100GB of data per month, at the time you can even punch in a monthly limit so that the modem will disconnect when you reach that limit.

The performance of the FRITZ!Box

The performance of the FRITZ!Box was solid in our tests and we experienced good reliability and speed. The modem clocked 15.661MBps in our download tests and 850Kbps in our upload tests using the PC World Broadband Speed Test, and during these aren't the fastest speeds we've seen from our connection, they are for all that very good. In our wireless networking tests, the FRITZ!Boz 7270 was able to deliver data to our test laptop at a rate of 8.54MBps from 2m away and at 6.44MBps from 10m away. It's by all means not the fastest performance we've experienced in these tests, however its everything considered a good showing for a wireless router. This performance is suitable for a small house or apartment.

Telephony is a huge part of the FRITZ!Box 7270 and during we had a little trouble getting our MyNetFone service to register, once it was all set up the performance of the device was very good. We used a supplied FRITZ!Fon DECT cordless phone, which worked very then with the FRITZ!Box's built-in DECT base station up to 15m away. The voice broke up only when we ventured out onto our balcony and there were plasterboard walls and glass balcony doors between the phone and router. The analog telephone attachment ports on the FRITZ!Box as well allow you to use any old phones you have lying around and you can plug in up to two of them; up to six DECT phones are supported.