Wireless network performance

First, let's take a look at the apartment that was used in our testing and how it is set up. You can see that the router is placed in the living room. With most wireless routers, the signal strength is not that great in rooms like the Kitchen and the Medium balcony.

Our testing was done using a fast 1 Gigabit Internet connection that's capable of uploads on the Internet of up to 200 Mbps. We used a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for all our measurements and several software tools. To get a better perspective of the performance offered by Edimax BR-6478AC V2, we compared it with two other routers with relatively similar specs and price: ASUS RT-AC1200G+ and TP-LINK Archer C7. Keep in mind though that the routers we compared it with, tend to be a bit more expensive than Edimax BR-6478AC V2 in most countries.

We started by evaluating the 2.4 GHz wireless network and measured the signal strength offered in each room, using a tool named inSSIDer. As you can see below, the signal strength offered by Edimax BR-6478AC V2 was generally better than that offered by its competitors.

Next, we used SpeedTest to measure how fast the Internet connection offered by this router is on the 2.4 GHz wireless band. In the download test, it had a mixed performance: in some rooms it was faster than its competitors while in others it wasn't.

The same was true when looking at the upload speed with SpeedTest.

Continuing our measurements on the 2.4 GHz wireless network, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. When measuring the download speed, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 was slightly slower than its competitors.

The same was true when looking at the upload speed.

When evaluating the performance of the Edimax BR-6478AC V2 wireless router on the 2.4 GHz band, we can say that it offers better signal strength than other routers and average performance when transferring data over the wireless network.

Next, we analyzed the performance offered by the 5GHz wireless network. First, we looked at the evolution of the signal strength, from room to room. As you can see below, the signal strength offered by Edimax BR-6478AC V2 was worse than that of ASUS RT-AC1200G+ and better than that of TP-LINK Archer C7.

We moved to SpeedTest , to measure the speed of the Internet connection on the 5GHz wireless network. In the download test, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 managed to outperform TP-LINK Archer C7 in several rooms, especially those which are farther from the router.

However, in the upload test, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 was slower than the other two routers.

Lastly, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. Edimax BR-6478AC V2 outperformed TP-LINK Archer C7 in most rooms, while ASUS RT-AC1200G+ remained the performance leader.

In the upload test, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 outperformed TP-LINK Archer C7 in all rooms except one.

Our measurements have shown that Edimax BR-6478AC V2 is capable of offering good coverage for the 5 GHz wireless network, as well as reasonably fast transfer speeds. It is a very capable router in this regard.

Wired network performance

In order to test the quality of the wired Ethernet connection, we used a desktop PC, equipped with an Intel Core i5 4460 processor, running at 3.20GHz, 16GB of RAM and a very fast Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor, running at 1.9 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a fast 256 GB SSD drive from Samsung.

First, we measured the download and upload speeds using SpeedTest. As you can see below, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 offered very good performance - in line with that of other routers.

For the last measurement, we transferred an 883 MB file between the same two computers connected to the network, both of which were using an Ethernet cable. Again, the speed offered by Edimax BR-6478AC V2 was similar to that of the other two routers.

Edimax BR-6478AC V2 delivers solid 1 Gbps Ethernet connections like promised in its specifications.

Extra features

In terms of extra features, Edimax BR-6478AC V2 offers the following:

• VPN Server - you can set the router to work as a VPN server and you can also use it to turn your network-connected devices into VPN-enabled clients.

• DNS Proxy - a DNS service which re-routes traffic to a proxy server in a different geographical location/region.

• Guest networks - you can enable up to two wireless networks that provide Internet access for your guests but restrict access to your network.

• Wireless schedule - you can set a schedule for your wireless networks so that they are turned off automatically when you are not at home.

• QOS (Quality of Service) - a traditional QoS service that ensures inbound and outbound bandwidth on both wired and wireless connections for prioritized applications and tasks via manual user-defined parameters.

• USB Applications - storage & FTP file or printer sharing as your own private, secure cloud.

The Edimax BR-6478AC V2 wireless router includes several extra features that have the potential to be useful to its owners. The only important feature that is missing is a Parental Controls module.

Verdict

Edimax BR-6478AC V2 is a very capable wireless router at a very affordable price. It's strong point is the wireless coverage on the 5GHz wireless band. This router offers quite a few extra features, good performance, good coverage while keeping the price quite low. It's software is a bit spartan and unfriendly to casual users but, if you spend some time reading the user manual, you won't have issues in setting everything this router has to offer. If we were to describe the Edimax BR-6478AC V2 router in one sentence, it would be: "very good value for your money".