Buffalo AirStation N600 Dual-Band Wireless Router Review

Buffalo AirStation N600 Final Thoughts

After working with the Buffalo AirStation WZR-600DHP dual-band router, the thing we can say with the most confidence is that we only scratched the surface of what the router – and more specifically, the DD-WRT firmware can do.

We don’t normally spend too much time with trying to configure and tweak the firmware that comes with the routers that we review, but since the DD-WRT firmware is a major selling point for this router, we wanted to make sure we spent some quality time in the GUI.

Prior to the AirStation WZR-600DHP, Buffalo had already started shipping routers with DD-WRT as the factory default as far back as the summer of 2010. Buffalo ships the AirStation WZR-600DHP with two different kinds of firmware on their Resource CD, the “User-Friendly” firmware and the “Professional” firmware. The DD-WRT v24SP2-MULTI (07/09/12) version that we chose did not disappoint if you are a fan of open source firmware. The DD-WRT GUI is still Buffalo “branded” and contains some AirStation specific features. Buffalo has added the ability to easily flash firmware binaries via their webflash utility.

We love the fact that users can modify and customize the firmware on this version of the AirStation, but really, what is stopping people from doing this on their own. Taking a quick glance at the list of supported devices on the DD-WRT site, contains a very large library of compatible devices and we were hard-pressed to find a device in our library that wasn’t supported.

The Buffalo AirStation WZR-600DHP comes with a 3-year warranty which is among the best on the market and certainly one of the best and for a sub-$100 dual-band router. For those that who love to tweak the setting on their router to squeeze out the absolute best performance, then the Buffalo AirStation with its customized DD-WRT firmware will be the router you are waiting for. For us, it was a little too much to tweak, but Buffalo gets high marks in bringing this open-source architecture to mainstream.

Legit Bottom Line:

The Buffalo AirStation WZR-600DHP Dual-Band Wireless Router ships with a customized DD-WRT firmware as its largest selling point. Even though the router is feature rich, the lack of wireless performance makes it hard to recommend.