There seems to be a desire among network kit makers to give what are basically black boxes some character. US Robotics' 5461 wireless router has rounded, smoothed lines and big green indicator LEDs, so it looks like a radio alarm you might have beside your bed. It's unlikely to help wake you up in the morning, though.

Instead, it can connect four, cabled PCs and many wireless ones to a shared Internet connection and a printer. It does this using a proprietary system called MaxG, which US Robotics claims can produce the same performance (roughly 108Mbps) as the Super G industry standard, but still within the parameters of the IEEE 802.11g standard. Super G adopters also claim it's still within the standard too, of course, but don't expect to be able to mix and match between the two.

Using the 5461 with a US Robotics wireless PC Card, to the same MaxG standard, produced impressive data transfer rates. At 8m, the router was transmitting and receiving at around 18.6Mbps and when we increased the distance to 35m, it still managed 14.5Mbps. These real-world figures may not bear that much relation to the rather theoretical maximum transfer rates suggested by the 54Mbps 802.11g standard, but are still better than many of its competitors.

The router is easy to set up and, by dialing into its IP address from any available browser, you can easily set up operating parameters such as security levels and encryption. Interestingly, if you use US Robotics wireless networking cards, you can run a wizard to set up the router, instead - the software's supplied with the card.

A very useful extra built into the 5461 is a print server. Connect a printer to the USB port on the back of the router and any PC on your network, cabled or wireless, has direct access to it. You could share printers via Windows, of course, but then you have to go through the PC that's hosting the printer and that PC has to be left on for others to be able to print. Network-enabled printers typically cost £100 more than non-enabled ones, so having a server built into your router is a cost-effective alternative; you can use virtually any USB printer with it.

There's a two-year warranty supplied as standard with the 5461, which is pretty much standard for this type of product. It reflects the lack of moving parts and the high level of integration in any router's electronics.

Although not one of the prettiest routers on the market, the 5461 gets on and does its job extremely well. Bear in mind you'll need to fit MaxG wireless cards to your PCs to get top performance out of the router, but it's fully compatible at a slower speed with standard 802.11g kit, too.