TP-Link W8960N Wireless-N ADSL router review

It comes equipped with four LAN ports and is WiFi b/g/n certified, supporting wireless speeds up to 300 Mbps. Security for the aforementioned WiFi comes in the form of WPA/WPA2 and it even has some parental controls to limit times of availability or to bash certain sites with a ban-hammer.

In the box, other than the router, you’ll find an Ethernet cable, a line splitter and the necessary cables to hook up both your phone and your new router.

Setup

Setup involves an uncomplicated process of logging in to the router, clicking “Quick start” and following the prompts. The most complicated part for me was to remember my ISP account username and password.

As with the TP-Link TL-MR3420, it is possible to setup and manage the router from your mobile device, though not officially supported.

One gripe with the setup procedure is that WiFi defaults to being unsecured. It would be better practice for it to default to being secured and forcing the user to either enter a password or to change it to unsecured, thus preventing foolish accidents.

TP-Link W8960N Wireless-N ADSL router

Web UI

The Web interface is different to the TL-MR3420 in that it is only a two-column view. This might make it slightly harder to use for some, but the good grouping of options in the left-most pane makes finding a certain setting fairly easy if you have a rough idea what you’re looking for.

On the bright side, it does display quite nicely on a tablet screen.

In use

In daily use it handled things like a champ. With around seven connections (two wired, five wireless), there were no complaints to be had.

Wireless range was excellent and the W8960N should cover your house, flat or small office fairly easily. The wireless range being as good as it was can actually be considered another reason to make sure that it’s secured.

Price

The W8960N is priced at around R560 making it very competitive, especially considering everything on offer.

Conclusion

The TP-Link TD-W8960N has a good feature set combined with a very competitive price that makes it a great value-for-money choice. Add to this its admirable performance and it becomes almost a no-brainer decision to add it to the top of your list if you’re looking for a new wireless ADSL modem/router.