AVM Fritz!Box 7490

Amazing telephony.

Although AVM has recently released the MU-MIMOsupporting FRITZ!Box 7580 in its native Germany, that model has yet to make it to our shores. For the moment, we’re stuck with the older Fritz!Box 7490. ‘Stuck’ is perhaps not the right word — like ASIS’s DSL-AC68U, it may not be up to the latest Wave 2 wireless spec, but it’s still excellent. When it comes to telephony, there’s none better.

It’s one of a handful of extant routers that still supports integrated voice over IP. There’s a PSTN failover port in case of internet outages, a port for regular analogue phone handsets and an integrated DECT base station, so you can sync cordless phone handsets directly. There are multiple voicemail boxes (stored locally or on a hard drive), cloud-saved contact lists, alarms and automated wake-up calls and more. There’s even a mobile app that lets you make voice calls on your mobile using the VoIP service.

AVM’s firmware is great as well. It supports VPNs and a lot of advanced features. You can reassign one of the LAN ports as a WAN port, and there are capable access control and monitoring rules in place. It’s certainly not as accessible as the similarly capable ASUS firmware, however, and the suite of mobile apps for the platform aren’t that easy to grasp either. Initial setup is easy enough, but tweaking some of the more advanced settings requires some networking know-how.

The hardware supports USB 3.0 on both its ports and 3x3 MIMO for wireless in both bands. The Fritz!Box 7490 is quite the bargain.