Review on TRENDnet Wireless Gigabit Pre Encrypted TEW 812DRU by Ryan Frawley

I have delayed writing a review of this product as it has already been thoroughly reviewed and I doubted my five cents would add anything to the conversation. However, I feel obligated to caution others against purchasing TRENDnet products. I've been buying TRENDnet for about 15 years now and have been happy until recently. In the past they have made products at a great price and have a good track record. Something has changed. They don't seem to pay much attention to their firmware releases and they don't think about customer service and support. I've had this router for almost 2 years and for the most part it has been a disappointment and a waste of time. Money. I bought it based on a comparison posted by CNET and this router had the best AC performance. My experience was very different. My home tests showed from the start that my device had a problem with the 5 GHz antenna. The signal was excellent, but the throughput dropped significantly before the signal. At about 15 feet (line of sight) I have a full signal but I can't transmit packets. I've tried literally hundreds of combinations with the same results. I actually have Metageek's powerful wireless network troubleshooter that I use at work. I ran interference tests along with side signal strength tests and the issue is definitely with the router's antenna. When I ran my tests, there was no interference in the 5GHz band, and I still can't transfer packets when I'm 15 feet from the router. Praxis and told me to make sure the router was using the default settings. Useless. Not to mention it takes about a week to get an answer. I was hoping that future firmware updates would fix the issue, but that didn't happen. So I can only use the 5 GHz spectrum in one room in my house. Also, I'm stuck at 2.4 which defeats the purpose of buying this router. It was a waste of money.