World's Smallest Wireless Router for Hotel Rooms
 

Hi,

Here's a solution to share one Internet connection in a hotel room with multiple devices (laptop, iPad, smartphone, etc), or to create a wireless connection in older hotels that still only offer fixed Internet, with what was billed as the "world's smallest wireless router".

ABC World News covered it in their "Best Travel Gadgets of the Spring", here's the video clip": http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/spring-...ry?id=15970223

and the description: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/spring-...5970223&page=2

And the description on the company page: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/d...odel=TL-WR700N

Price is about $28 on Amazon.com or NewEgg.com.

Full disclosure, I help this company do PR, but it's gotten enough praises during the CES show that I thought it worthy to share with the community.

Seems like more than a few negative reviews due to Chinese language firmware. Has that been fixed in what is shipping now?

Not sure, but I will check on that. What, you aren't fluent in Mandarin, j/k? :D

There is an interesting D-Link in Office Depot that isn't much bigger than an iPad charger that can double as USB charger or a method of accessing or USB data on an iPad. I thought about it, but decided to give it some thought.

TL-WR700N:
Dimensions: 3.2 x 2.8 x 1.1 in. (81 x 71 x 28mm)

Apple Airport Express:
Dimensions: 3.7 inches (94.01 mm) by 2.95 inches (75.00 mm) by 1.12 inches (28.5 mm)

Asus Wireless-G Access Point (WL-330GE)
Dimensions: 2.4 x 3.4 x 0.7 inches

Its small BUT with a little effort from Asus it could lose that title real fast.
The price scares me $28 is really really cheap....

That's the D-Link DIR-505. Pimped by D-Link at CES in January, it is finally appearing on the market. I can't find and review from real consumer experiences yet. And at $69 the price is a bit steep for an unproven product, middle of the road between the ASUS and TP-Link on the low end and the Airport Express on the high end.

Whatever happened to the Linksys WTR54GS? Linksys pulled it, and now they are for sale on Amazon for $279. Used to be about $39.

I downloaded the specs, and couldn't find power requirements. One thing people were worried about w/ the D-Link was that the original specs didn't clarify that it worked on 220V (later specs clarified that it did). I assume this one works worldwide as well, but hopefully one of you early adopters will confirm that.

Nice to see the folding plug. This looks like a winner to me, assuming they can get the initial fw issues resolved.

OK I called my contact at TP-LINK to check. Apparently the ones with Chinese firmware were products that somehow people procurred from resellers that sold Chinese versions.

As long as you buy from mainstream outlets such as Amazon.com, Buy.com, NewEgg.com or any of the distributors (Ingram Micro, etc.), they should all be the regular English version.

The dead giveaway is that the Chinese FW ones will have Chinese on the outer packaging, but the TP-LINK contact assures me that at this point it shouldn't be very likely to get that in North America.

Here's an in-depth review on We Got Served: http://www.wegotserved.com/2012/02/2...pocket-router/

I had to replace mine with the Cradlepoint CTR35. That Linksys model is quite old and I do not think it was ever refreshed.

http://www.cradlepoint.com/products/...ortable-router

Be careful when ordering @ Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...buying-options

Most of the sellers of this item are shipping from Hong Kong.

I have a very similar model, wireless G, I bought in Shanghai for about $15 USD. I use it with my Windows laptop, iPad and Mac Air. Works great and despite the Chinese firmware and language I was able to figure out how to setup security.

Mine looks nearly identical with the only difference being the grey panels on this model. Most likely they are from the same manufacturer.

There is actually a smaller one i saw but it used a separate AC adaptor for power.

I didn't love the amps on the USB output. I didn't think it was enough to properly charge an iPad.

I picked up the TP-Link a few months ago in Singapore for S$35. Works great! ^

Also pretty small:
ZyXEL MWR102 74.5 * 59 * 15.5 mm
2.93 x 2.32 x .61 inches
no built-in power but is USB driven so one can use any USB power supply.
~$30

Custom firmware for the linksys WRT54xx is what happened.
Take a $40 router and make it work like a $300+ router.