DrayTek Vigor2762ac
If it’s advanced features you seek, the Vigor2762ac is a great choice – and the price is right too
SCORE PRICE £121 (£145 inc VAT) from broadbandbuyer.com
At first I thought I’d been sent the wrong model: it was hard to believe that this tiny, twoaerialed little box could be DrayTek’s top-of-the-range prosumer router.
However, it’s a mistake to judge the Vigor2762ac by its size. For sure, its wireless credentials aren’t as ambitious as some of its heftier competitors, with a quoted maximum bandwidth of just 866Mbits/sec on the 5GHz band – which is the lowest here by some distance. Yet, in our tests it generally kept up with the pack, delivering a solid 10MB/sec even at the remote end of my home. There’s no MU-MIMO, mind you, and, of course, only two aerials, so if you have lots of wireless devices running flat out, the Vigor2762ac might not cope as well as a pricier model.
The diminutive case also packs in a pair of USB 2 sockets. You can use these to share storage across your network via SMB or FTP (there’s no mediastreaming option), or hook up a compatible printer. If downtime is a no-no, you’ll be pleased to know that you can also plug in a 3G or 4G USB modem to take over if your primary internet connection goes down – although be warned that, since the two ports are stacked tightly on top of one another, a bulky dongle could potentially obstruct access to the second connector.
Access controls are impressively flexible. The scheduling function lets you configure up to 15 time slots of any length, recurring on specified days of the week, monthly or at an interval of your choosing, and you can blacklist not only URLs but individual services and specific applications. There’s a built-in category-based filtering service too, although you have to subscribe to activate it, which costs a fairly steep £50 per year.
Overall, the DrayTek Vigor2762ac is a fine choice for home, and an even better one for work. The price is very competitive, and the manufacturer’s 96% reliability score from PC Pro readers speaks for itself. Its only weak suit is ease of use: as with the Billion, the web portal is absolutely loaded with technical information and advanced enterprise-level features, which may frustrate and discourage less technical users.