Portal wifi router review: Nextgen in the making

Their are many routers out there claiming to give you reliable bandwidth speeds but what they don’t tell you and most consumers don’t know is that they work within the traffic limitations they’re constraint on. Most consumer routers cannot go beyond a certain amount of channels but the Portal wifi router is changing that. Portal opens the door for other wireless channels wi’ll giving you some great functionality along the way.

Initially launching on Kickstarter, Portal came in with the idea that they would break the barrier of congestion most consumers have in a high traffic wireless area, so does it deliver on that? Simple answer is Yes, what Portal does really well is having the ability to use wireless channels that are not used by other normal home routers. What you get for the most part is wifi signals that no longer dip to crippling speeds by high wireless traffic areas or ones that suffer from congestion at peak hours.

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Hardware
What Portal packs is a nine antennas system inside its round sleek white case unlike other routers of the same variety which have multiple antennas sticking out in a less attractive fashion. It is a AC2400 and Enterprise-Grade Security & Advanced Privacy. Aside the hardwire ports to connect units with it also has two usb ports. unfortunately it lacks a USB 3.0 port however. It also has a Mesh 2.0 system when connecting more then one unit for ultimate coverage (we’ll be doing an overview featurette soon).

While giving you consistent speeds is great how did it fair against other routers at its top speeds? Well when testing with a normal modem/router it blew it out of the water hitting the maximum download/upload speeds of 100-100%. When testing against a Nighthawk X6 Tri-Band Gigabit at close range it exceeded expectations and beating the speed while giving us a lower latency as well. The Portal also worked great at mid range as well and might actually have had better speeds then the Nighthawk but it does however lack in range versus it as the 5ghz channel couldn’t get as far as 700-800ft depending on the obstacles when we saw others that could do slightly better.

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Software
Using your home computer to make modifications or customization to your router is also now a thing of the past as Portal is one of the few that let you make full adjustments to it via the app that can be downloaded. You can switch the mode of the router to primary or bridge mode while also tinkering with other features and viewing who maybe on the network as well. This opens up the door for many possibilities as the people behind Portal are looking to bring many things within the app and the router itself since as it stands is lighter on features then other routers. The security of the router is also up there with some of the best and can even give you control within the app as well. You can let people access or lock them out of the router by using the app.

Bottomline
It’s without question that Portal is the most stable and unique wifi router on the market. With the ability to upgrade the software to take advantage of unique features that are out or coming in the future along with it being able to connect to channels that are not hit with everyday traffic to give you the smoothest speeds at all times it’s almost hard to compete with it. The router has some work to do when it comes to features for consumers to take advantage of and what it lacks in bigger areas looks to solved by using multiple units which we’ll give an in depth view on. The ground work is laid out so whether you adopt now or later you certainly won’t be disappointed.
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Author

  • Remy Cuesta

    [Editor-in-Chief] Co-founder of LVLONE I work to bring you our readers a fun outlet to read tech and gaming news, reviews and experiences.

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Remy Cuesta
Remy Cuesta
[Editor-in-Chief] Co-founder of LVLONE I work to bring you our readers a fun outlet to read tech and gaming news, reviews and experiences.

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