AVM FRITZ!Box 4020
A surprisingly flexible router if you’re looking to network on a budget
The 4020 sits more at the entrylevel end of AVM’s router lineup, and though fairly lightweight in construction, it still has some good features for the money. It can be used just as a wireless router, or also connected to any cable, DSL or fibreoptic modem, or a wireless dongle for mobile internet access. As well as Ethernet ports, it has a USB 2.0 port for connecting a dongle, or a printer or hard drive to share wirelessly.
The box works only on the 2.4GHz band with a maximum throughput of 450Mbps, which will be fine for most users though slow for large file transfers. Signal strength was good, however, and there’s a solid feature set that can be managed through a web browser. You get WPA2 security, guest access, automatic channel selection, a media server that uses SMB, FTP and UPnP to make music, pictures and videos available over the network, and parental controls, among other things.
Another nice feature is FRITZ!NAS, whereby signing up on the website enables you to access the contents of a connected hard drive even from outside your network, potentially using any internet connection.
This is a very affordable router with great features for home users and a relatively painless set-up procedure. It doesn’t have cutting edge hardware connectivity but it has enough for regular users, plus a better depth of options and tools accessible in its software than you might expect. Hollin Jones
A very affordable router with great features for home users, plus some set-up flexibility if you want it.