AVM Fritz!Box 3390, First Take: concurrent dual-band, 3-stream 802.11n
German router manufacturer AVM continues to gradually expand its range of SMB/consumer routers — although its conservative approach to products means it's usually a little behind the consumer technology curve. The benefits are routers with a longer lifecycle than many of its rivals, with new features added to all compatible models via the unified Fritz!OS firmware.
The Fritz!Box 3390 is the company's first concurrent dual-band 3-stream 802.11n model (it previously only had a single-radio 3-stream model, the Fritz!Box 3370), and is aimed at those who don't need the comprehensive telephony features of the FON models. There are no analogue phone ports or DECT base station, but it does support SIP telephony via the free Fritz!App Fon smartphone app for iOS and Android. Enabling Fritz!App support in the settings menu reveals the standard Fritz!Box telephony settings, including multiple SIP account and answering machine features.
The 3390 is cosmetically unchanged from previous models, with the internal antennas hidden in the 'fins' of the red and silver casing. Like most of AVM's newer models, it features a VDSL (100Mbps) modem and four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one of which can be used a WAN connection if needed. There are twin USB 2.0 ports for printer, NAS or 3G dongle use. The latest major version of the firmware, Fritz!OS 5.51, is included, which adds new features such as Google Contacts address book integration.
Performance boost
We ran some quick wireless performance tests on a review sample, and found it to have much better overall performance than the 3370 model. Using our standard 3-stream test setup and Passmark Performance Test 8 (Advanced Network Test) on the 2.4GHz band it achieved 53Mbps at close range, dropping off to a still-respectable 32bps at 25m. Performance on the 5GHz band was very similar, delivering 51Mbps at 1m and 34Mbps at 25m.
Costing €150 (ex. VAT), the Fritz!Box 3390 is not particularly cheap considering its features, but it's good to see a concurrent 3-stream model in the range at last.