D-Link Xtreme N DGL-4500 Gaming Router

The basics

D-Link's Xtreme N DGL-4500 is a wireless gaming router. It offers a Gigabit Ethernet connection for when you need it most, and packs in features including a display to let you know the current status. Although it's been around for a couple of years, it's now a lot cheaper than it's been in the past.

The good

The D-Link Xtreme N DGL-4500 Gaming Router features the company's GameFuel technology. As the name suggests, this is a key feature for gamers, as it prioritises different data streams, making sure downloads or web browsing comes second to gaming. As such, even if somebody else in your house is checking out the internet, your multi-player games won't suffer in speed.

Unlike most routers, the D-Link Xtreme DGL-4500 also gets a large display on the top of it. This lets you keep on top of status updates – such as whether you're currently connected to the internet or not, whether you're using a wired or wireless connection, and different settings, making it easy to avoid any problems.

When it comes to speed, the D-Link Xtreme N Gaming offers up to 300Mbps, with a Gigabit LAN connection for when you're not using the Wi-Fi.

The bad

Although the D-Link Xtreme N DGL-4500 Gaming Router copes well most of the time, we did find the connection dropping out occasionally when using lots of bandwidth. Although this may not be an issue for regular users, it can be highly frustrating when playing games, as it can be the difference between winning and losing.

The bottom line

The D-Link Xtreme N DGL-4500 Gaming Router may have been around for quite a long time, but it's still a very capable router. It's packed with neat features – such as the status display – and it works well. It's just a shame it's not slightly more stable.