Virgin Media Hub 3
Basic features and middling performance – not the most inspiring router Virgin Media has ever issued
Virgin Media introduced the Hub 3 in 2016. It’s included free with all of Virgin Media’s broadband packages and it’s the only internal router that supports Virgin’s fastest 300Mbits/sec package.
Aside from that, there’s nothing particularly special about it. Indeed, it offers little over and above the previous model, the Super Hub 2ac. As with previous Virgin Media routers, the Hub 3 stands vertical: it’s a little more angular, but otherwise the format is familiar, with a WPS button on the front, four Gigabit Ethernet ports, a pair of telephone ports (currently inactive) and a threaded attachment where you attach it to Virgin Media’s cable network.
There’s no USB port for storage or printer sharing, which is a disappointment, but the router can be switched easily into “modem” mode so you can bypass the Hub 3’s wireless features and use a router of your own choosing without having to run two separate wireless networks.
The router’s wireless capabilities look fine on paper. It has five internal antennae and supports 2x2 MIMO on the 2.4GHz band and 3x3 MIMO over 5GHz, for a maximum theoretical connection speed of 1,300Mbits/sec. The 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks operate simultaneously but come configured as a single network by default, so if you want to be sure you’re attaching to the fastest network, you’ll need to manually rename them.
Performance in our tests was middling. It hit a top download speed of 47.5MB/sec at close range over 5GHz and 9.7MB/sec in the kitchen,
but it’s nowhere near as fast as the BT Smart Hub, which reached 85.5MB/ sec and 13.8MB/sec in these tests. Still, it’s fast enough at long range to deliver full access to a 76Mbits/sec broadband connection.
The UI is less impressive, offering a spartan selection of features. It has no kind of access or parental control features and is extremely sluggish and unresponsive. Perhaps a greater problem, though, is that the Hub 3 has suffered a plague of major problems since its launch last year, and at the time of writing the biggest one – packet loss and high latency for some users – had yet to be fixed. It’s not a terrible router, performance-wise, but neither is it an outstanding one, and Virgin Media Broadband users who care about such things will probably want to replace the Media Hub 3 as soon as funds allow. At least the company makes that easy to do.