LG-Ericsson WBR-5050 Wireless 802.11n Dual-Band Broadband Router

LG-Ericsson's WBR-5050 Wireless 802.11n Dual-Band Broadband Router ($95, street) is a plain-looking router, and one that comes without a lot of extra features like USB ports or NAS functionality. It may not be much to look, at, but it is a very good, basic dual-band router that offers robust performance at both 2.4 and 5 GHz.

Specs
The LG-Ericsson WBR-5050 is a lightweight, small router with a white, plastic housing. It's small, with internal antennas so it's good for inconspicuous placement in a home network. The base is flat with bracket holders for wall-mounting.

Theoretical throughput speeds are 300 Mbps at both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The top panel features a WPS button, LEDs for power, radio activity, and LAN and WAN status. On the back, is a reset button, four Gigabit LAN ports and the WAN port.

A Whiteboxed Router?
While testing the WBR-5050 I noticed the device looked familiar?not only the hardware, but the plain-Jane utilitarian management interface. In fact the, interface was identical to that of another router I recently tested, Engenius' Dual Band Concurrent AP Router ESR7750.? The identical interface on both is because the WBR-5050 is originally manufactured by Senao Networks, a subsidiary of Engenius. LG bought and re-branded the device. There are some differences between the two routers, however. Engenius' router uses Ralink components. LG's router with Realtek's chipset is a much more robust performer, giving better throughput. It's apparent that the LG router has more powerful hardware of the two.

Setup
The router ships with a CD that has a manual and setup wizard. As with many routers in this price class, setup is what I refer to as "traditional," meaning you have to have the computer used for setup wired to one of the LAN ports on the router. This is a different process than that provided by newer, pricier router like the Cisco Linksys E series?which provide an amazingly easy setup for a wireless client.

For those who aren't freaked out by setting up routers and don't require much hand-holding, the WBR-5050 is still simple to set up. Even novices should have few problems. The wizard offers images showing how to power up and connect the router. The wizard then advises that router setup continues within the web configuration page; a nice segue into continuing configuration via the browser-based management console.

?A feature that bothers me with this router, as it does on its sibling, the Engenius ESR7750, is that the power LED lights up orange-red when the router is successfully powered up and stays red. Red LEDs on networking equipment should be reserved for errors and warning and impending doom, not as indicators that everything is status quo.? You also have to reboot to apply some settings, and it?s a long reboot, at about 44 seconds.

Features
LG's router offers the same features as the Engenius ESR7750. It provides good granular control over a wireless network. Security can be set as high as WPA2 PSK, and the included SPI firewall offers good protection against DoS attacks. Advanced users have the ability to disable NAT and configure port mapping, port forwarding, QoS, static routing, and Dynamic DNS, among other capabilities.

There's also a network monitor that will monitor bandwidth on both wireless bands. As with the Engenius router, the monitor refreshes so much that it's hard to get a good look at the results.

Performance
When it comes to performance, similarities between the Engenius ESR7750 and the WBR-5050 end. LG's router blows away Engenius' using the same test and the same test bed. Take a look at comparisons between the two and other similarly spec'ed wi-fi routers:
Throughput, 2.4 GHz, Mixed Mode:

Throughput, 5 GHz, N-only? Mode:

For routers of this class, meaning antennas that max at theoretical speeds of 300 Mbps on either band, LG's router offers the best performance tested.? The only issue, is that there is quite a drop in signal strength as you move away from the router. This might be problematic using the router to cover a large area.

LG's Surprisingly Good Router
Since the LG router is almost the same as the Engenius ESR7750, I expected the two to perform about the same. The internal parts of the LG router simply make for a faster router, however, although both have the same feature set. This is not a router ideal for large area coverage, and some of the annoyances in the ESR7750 are carried over into the WBR-5050 like the red power LED, the quickly refreshing monitor, and the long reboots after applying some settings. However, you can't ignore the very good performance. It's a solid four out of five star earner, and, while it's not quite an Editors' Choice pick?that title is still retained by the pricier Cisco Linksys E4200 v2?for under $100 the LG-Ericsson WBR-5050 Wireless 802.11n Dual-Band Broadband Router will do just fine for smaller coverage areas.

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