Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This review is specifically for this device: ***** TP-Link N300 Wireless Wi-Fi Nano Travel Router ***** https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TQEX8BO/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_1 After a very frustrating two day adventure with another brand, I hoped this would be easier. And, once you figure out that you should be setting it up with your phone/tablet (WiFi mobile device), the process gets a lot easier. According to the manual, it seems that you OUGHT to be able to set it up using a wired connection, but the device (at least for me) will not hold a wired connection, and it doesn't matter whether you select a static IP address or use the DHCP provided by the device. I spent more than an hour screwing around with a wired connection, all to no avail. However, reading through the manual for the third time, it finally occurred to me that I might be able to use my phone to connect to the WiFi SSID provided by the device. There's a little business card that comes in the package. DO NOT LOSE THIS CARD. The card has both the device SSID and the factory generated password (it's a string of digits, and you may need a magnifier). My phone, and (if you're using an Android phone) maybe yours, will connect to the device's access point via the SSID (e.g. TP-LINK_C846 for mine), but your phone/tablet may warn you that the device doesn't appear to connect to the Internet, and ask you if this is what you want to do. Choose YES. Please be patient. The setup side of the device is slow. It takes most of a minute to boot up, it loads the internal Web pages very slowly, and so on. Just chill out and let it take its sweet time. The next thing you will notice is that your screen isn't large enough to show the whole page, and you will have scroll and pan around to see everything. Just follow the directions from there. However, NOTE, read carefully the descriptions for the various modes. If you are trying to set it up to connect wired devices (or a wired network of devices) to a wireless network, and if you are used to using other brands, you might think that you want to choose "AP" (Access Point) mode, however in this device, THAT mode is called "Client" mode. It will scan the area for WiFi networks. You will pick yours, and you will enter the password for your router. Once everything is set the way you want it, you will want to reboot the device (well, okay, the device will tell you it wants to reboot), so go ahead and do that. Now you can take that device and run a wired connection to any Ethernet enabled device, appliance, or wired network (using, for example, a switch) and it will magically bind that thing or group of things to the wireless network transparently. The workstation I'm typing on right now has been having a problem with its on-board WiFi adapter, which has a tendency, since a recent Windows update, to just die every couple of hours. This was driving me nuts. So I've turned off that WiFi adapter and put the N300 WiFi Nano on one of my wired Ethernet ports, and -- PRESTO! -- no network connection failures since! Woo hoo! And the beauty of this? The gizmo that's actually working costs about half the price of the one that refused to work. Think I'm gonna buy another two or three of these. Very handy.